Haiku

Rifling through some piles of papers in the room I like to call my office, lest Mary pull rank on me and kick me out, I found a book of haiku that Natalie composed sometime in the last few years, and which might as well be captured for digital posterity.

Ocean
Blue, or is it green?
stretching far as I can see
Shining in the sun

Seagulls
Soaring in the sky
Feathers white, short beaks curved tight
Pleading for some bread

Not too shabby.

It makes me proud of my daughter, and also reminds me how fortunate we are to live in a place where this kind of thing is valued in education, making kids aware of different forms of expression and thereby fostering a sense that there are different modes of apprehension of being. This may be all swallowed up by the narrow functionalism of the Common Core, the Race to the Top or whatever, and their bastard stepchildren. Just as likely, we're going through one of those cyclical swings that we do, and if the schools come to provide less for the soul, the slack will be taken up elsewhere in the ecosystem, in houses of worship, on the Interweb, somewhere.  Not by bread alone.