POEM OF THE MONTH
November
Haiku
Ray Floret Trio by Amelia Salisbury
Haiku
road trip —
whiff of marigold
before the marigold
Namratha Varadharajan is a Math lover and an Engineer. She started writing poetry to process the tumultuous emotions of adulting and motherhood in this global melting pot, to clear her lens in a world of excess. Her work explores feminism, relationships and interconnectedness with nature. She enjoys the hunt for the right word. Her work has been published in Briefly Zine, haikuKATHA, cattails, bones, The Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English (2023, 2021), Usawa Literary Review, Muse India, among others.
Haiku is the experience of a moment that a poet attempts to invoke in the reader, with just a few words. Unlike a snapshot, a haiku invokes all the senses. Sometimes, it makes you linger longer in a moment that you cherish. As a city girl, I miss nature and the outdoors. When I travel, I love rolling down the windows, sun on my face, hair flying wild, lungs gulping in fresh air and gorging on the sights, sounds and smells of the countryside. And then, I try to hold onto them with my words. This haiku captures an anticipatory moment: that first whiff and then the big reveal. I hope the reader experiences this moment with me.
Namratha Varadharajan’s haiku captivated me with its masterful manipulation of time and anticipation. In eleven syllables, we have a complete sensory experience of a fleeting moment, mirroring the quick way in which scent travels through a car window. What I love most is the cadence the repetition of “marigold” creates — and the repetition itself is brilliant — the first instance ephemeral, the second concrete — perfectly capturing that delicious moment of anticipation meeting reality. This is what the best haiku do: they make us pause, breathe, and experience the world anew.
