It is fitting that my students’ journey began with a fellow traveller.

I teach middle schoolers, and it has occurred to me, from time to time, that my students do not quite understand how to pay attention. I don’t mean this in an academic sense. By and large, they tackle their work well and participate according to a sliding scale of cheerfulness. But they move so fast in their world, particularly through their digital existence, that they have not cultivated the art of paying attention.

This is the point where Bashō comes in.

Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694) was a Japanese poet. He is purported to have invented the haiku form. He certainly wrote haiku with exquisite precision. He is famous for this, as he is equally famous for his 1,500-mile solo journey on foot along The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Along the way, he composed poetry.

The gift of haiku, by Bashō and others, is that is captures a moment in time, a moment in nature, and a moment of being that did not exist before and will not exist afterwards. In short, “What is in these poems can’t be had elsewhere. About the things of the world, and the mind looking at the things of the world, and the moments and the language in which we try to express them, they have unusual clarity.” (Hass, The Essential Haiku: Versions of Bashō, Bosun, & Issa)

Of course, my students were familiar with haiku long before I introduced them to Bashō. Who amongst us has not watched a classroom of students, from the earliest grades on, using their fingers to count off syllables? But at the beginning of the year, I brought in a wonderfully transformative program from The Center for the Art of Translation called Poetry Inside Out (a shoutout here to my SDAWP friend Susan Minnicks for introducing me to this program). The basic premise is this: In partnerships, the students translate a poem from another language using a glossary and intense negotiations to produce a version in English. Their first poem was a Bashō haiku. Along the way, they learned compromise and something else: to pay close attention—to the the poet’s original intent, to the scene he captured, to the immediacy of the natural world.

Perfect launch point.

Weeks later, I showed my students a TED Talk by a famous artist, environmentalist, photographer, and activist: Chris Jordan. He poses the question Can Beauty Save Our Planet? Encouraging us to avoid alarmism and despair regarding our changing climate, he urges us instead to take action through the mindful cultivation of hope. The images in this short talk are extraordinary, or as Jordan states, “Who has not stood in the presence of beauty and had their heart break open with joy? Every detail of the living world speaks to us in the sacred language of beauty.” He also adds, “Maybe the fact that we turned away from beauty is how we got ourselves into this mess in the first place.”

Perhaps if my students learned to turn towards beauty, to pay attention, to really see nature, the way the old haiku masters saw nature, they could use that embrace of beauty to bring about change.

I have in my possession a book on writing haiku. Don’t be deceived by the cover; this book offers a deep discussion of the art. I was surprised, in fact, to learn that there is so much more to these small poems than syllable count. Briefly, here are the seven “keys” to writing haiku. What follows below are direct quotations from Haiku by Patricia Donegan.

FORM

You may have heard that, in English, haiku is like a syllable counting game, but that is not the important thing for haiku in English. Haiku is an experience, not an act of counting syllables. The important thing is experiencing the “haiku moment” and connecting with nature. In English, it is best to write haiku in three lines, with no specific syllable count. It should be one breath long.

IMAGE

Your haiku should have a descriptive image—for example, not “a flower,” but instead “a purple iris in the sun.”

KIGO (SEASON WORD)

Your haiku should refer to nature and hint at the day’s season or weather.

HERE AND NOW

You should write from real experience or memory, no imagination; record the present moment.

FEELING

Your haiku should not explain or tell, but instead show the feeling through your image.

SURPRISE

You haiku should have an “ah” moment that wakes us up.

COMPASSION

Your haiku should express openheartedness toward nature.

All of these ideas should be woven together, and the book discusses each at far more depth. However, I was entirely smitten with the notion that, while the seventeen syllable count was appropriate for the Japanese language, it could be cumbersome in English. Going back to Bashō, here it the poem that my students first translated:

In Japanese (seventeen syllables):

furuike ya (five syllables)

kawazu tobikomu (seven syllables)

mizu no oto (five syllables)

In English (three lines):

The old pond—

a frog jumps in,

sound of water.

My goodness! And just like that, in writing their own haiku, the students could concentrate on the moment, truly see the natural world, and skip counting on their fingers. This was revelatory! Equally significant was the idea that haiku is packaged with care and delivered in a single breath, a bit like blowing on a dandelion. While this may seem constrictive at first glance, it is quite the opposite as students are encouraged to zoom in and weigh the importance of their words, particularly the simplicity of their words.

After watching Jordan’s TED Talk, we discussed the idea of beauty, of truly seeing the beauty of our world and appreciating it. Just as with a haiku moment, that beauty is ephemeral—but so worth saving—and the first step was learning to pay attention.

We are blessed with an outdoorsy campus (some parents have likened it to “going away to summer camp”); it is short on buildings but long on trees. After studying the keys to haiku and with beauty in mind, the students spent some time outside, sitting quietly by themselves, focusing on their senses and their surroundings.

Then, they wrote:

Cedar branch

heavy with snow—

a red cardinal.

— Alex

A red rose

covered in frost—

the perfect death.

— Rylan

From secure buds

on shooting stems

comes a scarlet firework.

— Judah

Leaves dead

rot sets in—

yet irises bloom.

— Thea

Ant line

just a stripe on a tree

made by millions.

— Addy

I find it notable that the final “key” to composing haiku is compassion, particularly for nature. I believe wholeheartedly that this flavor of compassion calls, first and foremost, for actually noticing nature—in short, for paying attention. I mentioned that my campus is long on trees. It is, in fact, a wonderland of old growth sycamore and pine trees, with a soaring pecan tree and a California live oak thrown in for good measure.

Enough trees to have each of my students choose one to claim as their own.

They will be given the task of spending time with their tree and getting to know it well. I see this as a cross-curricular activity as our science teacher is deeply knowledgeable of natural history. This activity will also provide students a chance to use iNaturalist to help with identification. I envision weekly “tree day” visits—even if only for a few minutes. The time that they will be spending is close to the Japanese concept of Shinrin-Roku (roughly, “forest-bathing):

“Shinrin in Japanese means ‘forest,’ and yoku means ‘bath.’ So shinrin-yoku means bathing in the forest atmosphere, or taking in the forest through our senses. This is not exercise, or hiking, or jogging. It is simply being in nature, connecting with it through our sense of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. Indoors, we tend to use only two senses, our eyes and our ears. Outside is where we can smell the flowers, taste the fresh air, look at the changing colours of the trees, hear the birds singing and feel the breeze on our skin. And when we open up our senses, we begin to connect to the natural world…. Our rhythms are the rhythms of nature. As we walk slowly through the forest, seeing, listening, smelling, tasting and touching, we bring our rhythms into step with nature. Shirin-yoku is like a bridge. by opening our senses, it bridges the gap between us and the natural world.” (Li, Forest Bathing, 12-14)

In other words, Shinrin-Yoku is about compassion, both for ourselves and for the beauty that surrounds us—in nature.

I will invite the students to photograph their chosen tree, from multiple angles (including, and most especially, closeups) and at different times of the day to help them hone the art of seeing. When they are ready, I’ll be asking them to compose multiple haiku, which they will then pair in an album that includes their photographs and/or original art.

Just as a lovely family of woodpeckers has made the interior of my backyard pecan tree their home, Earth Day is similarly nestled within Poetry Month. If all goes according to plan (and the pandemic and weather permit), I would like my students to share their trees and their work with parents or students from another grade level through something akin to a “tree tour” on Earth Day itself.

In much the same way that a haiku exists in a moment of time and is therefore timeless, I do not see a given end date to this project but hope that it grows into something more, even if that something is as localized as finding ways to provide dedicated sitting spots so that others can enjoy the serenity of our campus trees or learning about the importance of the urban forests that surround us and how to assure their survival.

Bashō composed his poems 350 years ago, and they are still revered today, in part because brevity may be the sincerest form of homage to the natural world. Perhaps the small steps that I take with my students will reap the larger rewards that paying attention can bring—it might even bring about much needed change.

Maybe even in a single breath.

• Chris Jordan has delivered multiple TED Talks other than Can Beauty Save Our Planet? I would strongly recommend viewing them first as some of his images (particularly in the talk The Midway Project) may be too intense for younger kids: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjK0cvbm20M

• I included here the trailer for Shinrin-Yoku; however, there is a one-hour version available through Amazon Prime and a six-minute version, which is lovely and meditative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02CXKnftM-4

• When my students are getting to know their chosen trees, I'll be using this book to help them "see" with ever more discerning eyes: The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs: Use Outdoor Clues to Find Your Way, Predict the Weather, Locate Water, Track Animals―and Other Forgotten Skills by Tristan Gooley: https://tinyurl.com/naturesight

• Here are two Radiolab podcasts on the power of trees: From Tree to Shining Tree: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/from-tree-to-shining-tree and Forests on Forests: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/forests-forests