Haiku Reflections

In the chill of winter, the poet observes some boulders that appear closer to the shore than before. Boulders are massive rocks, generally too large for a person to move. How did this happen? Her poem presents a riddle, which is a classic haiku technique. Gravity might explain the situation, or beach erosion, or rising sea levels. But the poet’s answer is lighter and more humorous. Using another haiku technique, she personifies the boulders, giving them a will of their own. The simplicity of the words and images require us to use our imagination to explore what’s happening. If we consider the movement of boulders in geologic time, the effect is astonishing. In the ice age, ice sheets advanced across the continents, picking up boulders along the way. The boulders were transported over thousands of years and left when the ice melted. Read in this way, we discover natural forces acting over eons and experience a sweeping landscape of past, present, and future in just 17 syllables. We may also interpret the poem as testimony to the pace of climate change, in which case the effect is equally astonishing and more emotional. The distance between the boulders and the shore has visibly decreased every time the poet looks in that direction. Change is literally happening before our eyes. There is no better season than winter and the starkness of an empty shore to capture what’s happening in our environment.
—Susan Polizzotto