the way of haiku

NOTES

I wrote this after I pulled the kitchen door shut in the house we were renting in Island Falls, Maine. It’s an old house, a historic home, built in 1865, and it has old-style latches, which I’ve not seen much. Pulling too hard can bounce the door open, rather than closed, so, as I do with many things in life, during the time we stayed at the Sewall House, I made a game of trying to close the door softly by pulling it at the perfect momentum to click it shut.

One morning I walked into the kitchen rather early, while Fálki was still asleep, so normally I would not play the game, because the risk of failure might cause a loud noise. But on this particular occasion, I walked through the door, pulled the door behind me, let it go to allow the door its own momentum, and “click.” I smiled in triumph.

I originally posted the first iteration of this haiku at Fálki’s Mighty Network like this:

door yanked shut
closes with a soft click —
life’s pleasures

I didn’t feel that fully described my feeling as the door clicked softly. As I said above, it’s a game I play. Can I pull the door just hard enough? So I posted the haiku here like this:

door yanked shut
closes with a soft click —
victory

Two weeks later I changed the haiku to what it is now, personalizing it.