On the way home

I met a friend

and heard a prayer

 

Natsuishi’s haikus from the first half of The Endless Helix are like prayers when written this manner: a whisper of reverence on the wind, softening and shaping the soul. 

 

Walking is philosophy’s

best friend --

voices from the clouds

 

Natsuishi presents us with reflections to take with us wherever we are! Like this one, his words echo in our mind, reminding us of our connection with nature, the playful way we can interact with everything around us as we would our best friend… walking together, unravelling the meaning of life.

 

The sleeping woman

is not here -- she swims

with tropical fishes

 

The picture Natsuishi conjures up with this haiku is immediately seen. The woman sleeping before our eyes is really not there; her mind is away, dreaming of swimming with tropical fish. This haiku beautifully captures the all-expansive power of the mind over the limited confinement of the body.

 

Under the scorching sun

I have forgotten

how to love myself

 

A real life haiku! How many of us have forgotten how to love ourselves during the trials and tribulations of life. The burning sun, the grind of daily life, can zap our innate love for living, our sense of well being, and even goodwill for others. This is a wonderful ku reminding of our humanness within this world. 

 

Short poems—away from the succinct haiku style, still holding haiku characteristics—fill the second half of Endless Helix. Natsuishi shares his personal dreams both recent and from childhood, which inspires readers beyond the pivotal point of haiku brilliancy and profundity. The beauty of writing haiku is incorporated into the following dream, highlighting it as the spice of life, which is all we need to rest our heads!

 

A small room

With sand on the floor by the window,

a bush to the right,

a tube to the left.

We sleep well in this room,

write good haiku poems.

We don’t need books.

We don’t need a house.

 

‘Each moment contains one hundred messages from God’, Rumi said, and haikus are a wonderful medium to capture some of these impressions. Natsuishi expounds on this saying, ‘Haiku catches not only one moment, but more than two. Each moment is either a symbol or a metaphor of other moments’. His interpretations take in the entire scope of haiku possibility, exemplified in the Flying Pope, limitless in his capacity to express… taking us to the mystical realm of our intrinsic connection to all things—even a dewdrop. To karma and reincarnation; politics; religion; victory and loss; emotions; compassion; ethics; non-ethics; humour; aging; and imaginations…listing some of the themes embedded in the journey Natsuishi invites us into the illusion of consciousness. A flight sometimes visiting illusions that dive into more sombre truths and possibilities    

 

The reason why                                                         After his death

the Pope flies:                                                            still sick

a dewdrop                                                                   the Flying Pope

 

After winning the Nobel Prize                                  Still in a coma

the Flying Pope                                                          the Flying Pope

lost                                                                               lands on the ground

 

Flying Pope                                                                  The Flying Pope

Apologizes to                                                               at long intervals

the thousand-years-old cedar                                   pulls up a gravestone

 

Natsuishi describes the Flying Pope as you and me, ‘a symbol of the 21st Century. The old West is ruling the whole world, sometimes, bringing us disasters in the name of god or the good, for example, the Iraq War.  We are meaningful as well as meaningless.’

 

‘The Flying Pope was accidental’, Ban'ya Natsuishi says.  ‘One day, in a dream he said to himself: "soratobu hoo" (flying pope).  Then, he began writing the series without thinking what it really meant’… Therefore, we are free from deep, lengthy analysis, driven also to find the meaning within our own resonance and interpretations! Or no meaning at all, if we choose!

 

Once in a while

he swims in the Galaxy

the Flying Pope