The Old Cherry Tree By The Lake...

Dead tree, blossoming
Twisted trunk, pink flower buds
Like a corpse breathing

Ancient and rotten
Split and stunted, bent and burnt
This is surely death

Yet blossoms burst forth
Pink and fragrant, life from death
Impossible bloom

This, here, is the Tao
From dead Yin flowers Yang life
Fire roars from ashes

I see this, and know
I am this tree; my Tao flows
From root to petal

...

Just posted this yesterday, and I'm already editing it.  I posted it too quickly, and almost immediately saw changes I wanted to make.  Doesn't help that haiku is about the most immature, Creative Writing 101 style of poetry, either.  But, I'm not a poet, and I've never claimed to be.  The thing I like about haiku, is that it isn't necessarily about being pretty or poignant or profound.  A lot of the power is inherent in the form itself; anyone can do it.  It lends this almost zen-like quality to whatever you say.  So, I find it's perfect for expressing zen-like thoughts and emotions.

I found this tree on my way back from my old high school during my St. Patrick's Day drift, after sitting for a while under the tree where She and I first fell in love a couple of decades ago.  I was stunned, at first, to see something so blatantly impossible.  Then I was attracted to it, because I found it so amazing.  Then I felt an intense kinship with this tree, as though we'd shared similar lives, and were both going through the same experience just then.  I would've taken a picture of it, so that I could share this amazing sight with others, but my phone had just died the day before, so I didn't have a working camera on me for once.  Seems oddly like provenance, now, that this mystical vision should only exist in my memory.  I have this strange feeling that if I went back to that spot, the tree wouldn't be there anymore.

I'd been planning to write a full entry about the experience at some point, but during meditation yesterday afternoon, the seeds of this haiku began to form inside of me, and by the time I was finished meditation, I knew I had to express them.