Late in his too short life, haiku discovered Richard Wright.

Here is one example.


An apple blossom
Trembling on a sunlit branch
From the weight of bees.



He wrote his haiku whenever a timeless notion wafted on a breeze nearby for him to hear the whisper. And he found a napkin or scrap of paper and jotted down the notion like a musical note. He wrote thousands of them.

Late in his years, Richard Wright found this peace and he flew and dove right in. And he swam in its soothing waters. And it did not matter where he was. He swam.

You will be pressed to find a more committed human being than Richard Wright.

He wrote songs.[1] He wrote novels, plays and essays, many essays. He wrote haiku.

He joined committees. He was, for a time, a member of the communist party. He formed coalitions for peace and for the betterment of people. He helped to change racial relations in America, but he died in France at 52.

Richard Wright was a comet above our sunlit Earth. Sensing his truth, we trembled.

Discover him. But be ready. His stories are real and unlike his haiku, they are seldom gentle.


Image: Bee pollinating[2] (available to share); Enjoy haiku by Richard Wright at the link below[3]

[1] Wright’s tribute to Joe Louis “King Joe”, vocals by Paul Robeson with Count Basie and his Orchestra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYjE-MWcL4U

[2] Photo licensed in Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license, found on Wikipedia at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pollinationn.jpg

[3] See: http://terebess.hu/english/haiku/wright.html