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Haiku

Yesterday, on the first full day of spring, we had a big snowstorm. I went for a walk and was inspired to write a haiku.

By callow brick walls,
snow falls on insouciant trees,
as timeless as I.
I was struck with the confluence in time of the snow (ancient), the trees (more recent), the buildings (even more recent), and me (most recent of all, but imbued with consciousness that gives me the illusion of being more important than all the rest - which makes me the most callow and perhaps the most insouciant as well).

Comments

  1. Why isn't the snow the most recent of all? After all, it had just been formed in the atmosphere!

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  2. I was thinking of the appearance of snow, trees, and buildings in geological time. In that sense, the first snow on Earth was billions of years ago, the first trees were hundreds of millions ago, and the first buildings just tens of thousands of years ago. Then I switch to me, extant for mere tens of years. Why do I get to count myself as an individual while aging snow, trees, and buildings as entire classes? Poetic license, I guess.

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