haiku

coyotes yipping

desert winds erase all tracks

an elf owl calls--why

     I don't normally like to use a center margin with my poems.  It seems a little too easy.  But in this haiku I felt the need to use it to represent the centering, or pulling toward the center of all beings--we are all related.  Each thing we do has an effect upon all others.  I thought I could use the center margin to help show this. 

    This poem was fun because I had to do a little research.  We're having a bit of wind tonight, so the yipping voices of the coyote are carrying across the canyon.  I have been reading the GAURDIANS OF GA'HOOLE by Katherine Laski, and I knew I wanted to include an owl watching the coyotes from his burrow in a Saguaro. I had originally used the traditional owl sound who as the last word of this poem.  But when I looked the bird up in my PETERSON FIELD GUIDES, Western Birds, text and illustrations by Roger Tory Peterson; the listing for the elf owl, Micrathene whitneyi, says the voice is "A rapid, high pitched whi- whi-whi-whi...often becoming more yipping or 'puppy-like,'" (Wow, I didn't think I'd ever have use for that single quote followed by the double quote, but there it is.)  So then I knew I had the bird I had heard and the one I wanted in this poem and I had to change the who to the why which makes the poem so much richer in conveying the meaning I wanted with this poem.  Oh, this was fun.

   This poem includes the word "tracks" which is the challenge word for this month at children's poet David L. Harrison's blog.  So I will post this poem over there too.  If you write your own poem, Harrison has a monthly challenge for adults and two categories for children. The children poems are at http://davidlharrison.wordpress.com/young-poets-word-of-the-month-poems/

and the adult poems are at http://davidlharrison.wordpress.com/adult-word-of-the-month-poem/

So here is the writing exercise for today,  write your own haiku, or a poem about "tracks."  Share your poem with me in the comments below or post it on Harrison's blog.
   Thank you for stopping by.