summer vacation

summer vacation
the pebbles we bring home
from the mountains

Melissa Allen                    Kokako 16   and Reddragonfly, april 29, 2012

(I posted this commentary on Melissa’s blog earlier today.)

 I like this haiku starting with the image of summer vacation and all the good memories it evokes.   For me at least, the expectations of a summer vacation are huge.   I want it all and I want it perfect and preferably in August.  The mountains play into the big expectation.   Limitless terrain of mountain peaks matches the endless expectations of fun and sun and good times.   

 I also feel the backward links to older Japanese haiku with the images of mountains and pebbles.   This haiku seems to sit well within the old tradition.   Now pebbles have a sense of small delights, the little wonders of life.   And this is certainly something that we bring back from a summer vacation.    The small objects bought in quaint stores and the priceless memories of a summer evening.  

 On another level there is the interplay between that large mountain with all its boulder underpinnings and the small pebbles.   Our memories and sea shells and pebbles seem small and trivial compared to the vast mountains.    

 One last go at the word pebbles.   A person climbs in the mountains and invariable gets a pebble in his/her shoes.   The pebble irritates.   This too is part of summer vacation.   For all the grand expectations, there are pebbles in the our shoe which we do bring home.    The word pebbles (those outside and those inside shoes) nicely encapsulates the complex set of memories we take home from a vacation.