Haikuuu-awooo

Poetry for the dogs.

By Zach Hively

Here’s a little secret insight, a peek behind the curtain, a glimpse behind the veil:

I am, whatever else you may have heard, a human being.

And that means I come with a whole duffel bag of junk that all the other species on Earth, so far as we know, never have to deal with.

​Except dogs. Dogs have to deal with all our junk. Because they’re dogs, and it’s what they do.

Sometimes I, being human, get in my own way.
​
This is especially true when I am trying to be a writer. It’s less true when I’m trying to put frozen chicken tenders in the oven. Most humans should be able to handle that. (Although you’d be surprised.) But writing requires me to create something outside myself, using only what’s in myself, which exists only in the world outside myself.

When I get in my own way too much as a junky human being, the best way out is to love on my dogs. And when I get in my own way too much as a writer, the best way out is to write haiku.

​Good haiku is an exquisite artform. What I usually do is chicken-tender haiku. The sort where I say to myself, “Any ol’ writer can write seventeen measly syllables!” And then I make myself prove it.

I recently undertook a Big Adventure with my dogs.

We got out of our usual everything and put ourselves somewhere new, for a time.
There is exactly one extrovert in this pack, and he took right to it.

There are exactly two introverts in this pack, and one of them handles things with much more grace than I do.

​So when the writing got tough, and my insides felt junky, I started scribbling down some chicken-tender haiku … from the perspective of two dogs on a Big Adventure.

​Here is what came out.

​hey, hey, did you know
we get the same food here, but
water tastes different

before our desert
we knew paved alleys and grass
​hello, our old friends

seasoned country dog
my first suburbanite squirrel
talk about wild life

short-term neighbor's ask:
do you want to say hi? no?
​i'm just like my dad

strangers coo "handsome!"
we have thoughts: Amazon trucks
should follow my rules

favorite toy, new rug
can i still lay on your foot?
​home away from home