Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle
Debra Woolard Bender
November 11, 2001

There's a patch of old snow in a corner
That I should have guessed
Was a blow-away paper the rain
Had brought to rest.
It is speckled with grime as if
Small print overspread it,
The news of a day I've forgotten --
If I ever read it.
Robert Frost, A Patch of Old Snow

I usually have one to three grandchildren at my house on Saturday's. Oftentimes, one spends over Friday night. This weekend my eldest granddaughter, Kayla, spent over and we went on one of our ritual treasure hunts at a second hand store in the neighborhood. I always hope to find a haiku book, even one of the little gift editions that Hallmark once published. But in all the years I've scavenged, I've never found one. Perhaps haiku is too esoteric and not many people had such books in their libraries, although I live in a once fashionable, early 1960's suburb, the era when haiku was making a strong debut in American schools. One would expect to find a little something...

In the gray evening
I see a long green serpent
With its tail in the dahlias
It lies in loops across the grass
And it drinks softly at the faucet.
I can hear it swallow
Beatrice Janosco, The Garden Hose

Nowadays, it may be that vendors, realizing what sells easily at auction, scarf up any books on the subject of haiku. Having been a seller, myself, of Mid-twentieth Century modern domestic and office accessories, furnishings and occasional books, I know how vendors haunt the thrift stores and flea markets, quickly buying up anything collectable. I did. That is, until I turned my attention to haiku and related poetry.

I have eaten
the plums
that were in the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.
William Carlos Williams, This Is Just to Say

Late Friday afternoon, Kayla, age 10, and I went out for a "girls day out" at a manicure salon run by a Vietnamese family. A woman runs the shop, along with her younger sister and a daughter. Sometimes the woman's husband also comes in to do nails. This time there was a new girl, also Vietnamese. The Asian girls laughed and talked to each other in their native tongue. After having her hands waxed and washed, Kayla selected a glittery, light blue color. The technician, only slightly taller than she, asked in halting English, "Want a design?" On each ring-finger's nail, slender black grasses appeared from the skillful manicurist's brush. Meanwhile, my nails were painted the color of ripe persimmons. I asked my manicurist, Vu, aka Mary, if I could also have a design. Me -- who has never had a manicure in her life until this year! My hot-red-orange ring-fingernails now sport twin curled white grasses, met in their middles by a swirl of glitter. Vu is an artist. Her intricate designs grace hundreds of acrylic nails pasted to selection boards on display around the salon. And on disembodied latex long-nailed hands lined up along the showcase window to lure customers...

When I carefully consider the curious habits of dogs
I am compelled to conclude
That man is the superior animal.
When I consider the curious habits of man
I confess, my friend, I am puzzled.
Ezra Pound. Meditatio

After comparing our manicures, we walked to the corner thrift store, just steps away. We headed for the books, first. My granddaughter selected about ten books, putting them in her "definite maybe" basket. I found one on ikebana, and to my surprise, a paperback on poetry -- short verses in a Scholastic Book Services publication dated August 1968 -- "Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle...and Other Modern Verse." The original price was 50 cents; the thrift store price, 59 cents. Inflation. Flipping through the pages with brightly decorated fingertips worthy of black-lights and 60's "mod" fashion, I was taken back in memory to my high school English classes, where I first learned of a few of the poets represented the rein. Most of the Watermelon Pickle poets were unknown to me. I graduated from high school in June 1968 and didn't take up poetry in a more serious manner until the mid 1970s through the 1980's. Poetry has, in an off and on way, been part of my life-goings.

A rumpled sheet
of brown paper
about the length
and apparent bulk
of a man was
rolling with the
wind slowly over
and over in
the street as
a car drove down
upon it and
crushed it to
the ground. Unlike
a man it rose
again rolling
with the wind over
and over to be as
it was before.
William Carlos Williams, The Term

For various personal reasons, I left all the books on a top shelf, deciding to return on Saturday to purchase them, if nobody else had bought them first. On our return, only the book on ikebana was gone. We drove away with our bagfuls of treasures. Kayla went home in the afternoon. In the evening, I opened the poetry book for a better look. Leafing through the pages, I found that "Watermelon Pickle" held a gift of one haiku. In the book of 143 pages, it is on page 129. I was so happy that, to celebrate my very-first-second-hand-store-book-with-a-haiku-in-it, I'm writing this little piece, similar to haibun. Today is November 11, 2001. Happy birthday to me. Tomorrow marks a turning into the second term of my personal century.

The geese flying south
In a row long and V-shaped
Pulling in winter.
Sally Andreson, Fall

This warm-cool morning in Florida where it never snows, long, twinned pine needles drape the jasmine bower over the cedar love-seat swing. I am looking just outside the window, where I sit at computer keyboard with these longish persimmon colored, grass-decorated fake nails which make typing difficult. I haven't even had breakfast yet and the clock is already bringing in noon. Instead, I'd picked up the book again this morning to digest it with a steamy mug of tea. Ahh...the first entry in "Watermelon Pickle":

One is amazed
By a water-lily bud
Unfolding
With each passing day,
Taking on a richer color
And new dimensions.
One is not amazed
At a first glance,
By a poem,
Which is as tight-closed
As a tiny bud.
Yet one is surprised
To see the poem
Gradually unfolding,
Revealing its rich inner self,
As one reads it
Again
And over again.
Naoshi Koriyama, Unfolding Bud

*Poems from Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle...and Other Modern Verse compiled by Stephen Dunning, Edward Lueders and Hugh Smith, SBS/Scholastic Book Services, New York, London, Richmond Hill, Ontario, August 1968.

Debra Woolard Bender is Editor of the World Haiku Review. Some of her work can be found on her web page: Paper Lanterns. On it you can find information about the haibun form of prose/poetry.