Poem of the Week: 12.29.22

"Seasonal Reminders (4 haikus)" by Ricky Novaes de Oliveira

SEASONAL REMINDERS (4 HAIKUS)

by Ricky Novaes de Oliveira

1.		— Cicada jumps
	leaf to leaf, I had forgot
	the life around me

2.		Te amo — não mais	
	beside the campfire		
		Burning our shadows	

3.	Upon emerging, 
	snowcaps: new beauty surges
			from the flowing rain

4.		Tears, breath, city spread
	as the estuary creeks,
		collects, release —

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Read by the poet:

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Thank you for reading the Poem of the Week, and cheers to an upcoming new year! One of my brightest joys of 2022 was starting this lil newsletter and receiving your support. Being connected through poetry is gratifying for my work, and I hope you have liked what you read in the past few months.

As the year comes to a close, we reflect. Every year, I tend to think “wow, this past year was one of the most difficult yet!” And then the next year comes. It is easy to get caught up in cycles of self-blame or existential dread when considering 365 days past and another 365 days to come, so I offer you 4 haikus through “Seasonal Reminders” to aid in contemplating where you are and where you want to go.

This quartet of haikus were initially written separately, unrelated and temporal. To me, they each speak to a specific season of the year and, when put together, represent a cycle of emotions familiar to processing trauma. What begins as a moment of detachment (“I had forgot”) bleeds from past pain (“Burning”) but eventually finds peace in the act of letting go (“collects, release”). Seasons change, as we do, as we will, until we won’t, but seasons will still.

Enough about the sagely veneer—this poem is weird. The syllabic haiku meter in the first and last lines of the poem is off (4 instead of 5); there’s random Portuguese embedded into English; and the em dashes that cut and connect. For a while, I thought nobody would want to read my weird, personal, experimental poetry, but that seems not to be the case. Similarly, there were times when I felt like I might get lost in the “shadows.” Nonetheless, I write to you, so that is not the case. If there is anything to learn from all the change that surrounds us, it is that we, too, can change and survive that change and then change some more. When we “emerge” and embrace the moment, we still carry who we were, and we are stronger for it.

You may still have questions, as do I, but a new year is coming, and we should get ready, so I’ll wrap up with words from Clarice Lispector instead, who says it best:

     My God, I just remembered that we die. But—but me too?!
     Don’t forget that for now it's strawberry season.
     Yes.

Yes, Ricky