I was standing on the banks of Onondaga Creek, at the Zen Center, watching a group of ducks. It was the end of summer. They were swimming along in a sort of military formation, quite intent on where they were going. I thought, Hmmm, they don’t know it’s called summer, or fall; they don’t follow a calendar, but they are intuitively aware. To them, it’s just a beautiful day. It’s warm, and they’re swimming, north, toward Armory Square.
Every haiku has to include a reference to the season, and has to have some kind of grounding in a specific place. So I wanted a humorous reference to the fact that fall was coming, yet here are these ducks swimming in formation toward the center of the city, going north.
