From Sea To Shining Sea

This book of images and words (defined as haiga in Japanese) blends two different genres and invites a reader to see disordinary kinds of art around us that we sometimes miss. The photographs and haiku in concert offer artistic experiences, everyday art, available as quotidian delight in the world. The group of Tomoka Poets I belong to in Ormond-by-the Sea, are dedicated, innovative poets, seeking ways to mix media in terms of music and poetry, paintings and haiku. One member has initiated a poetry in the parks program wherein poets read their work against the backdrops of Florida’s dense native scrub land, winding and inviting forests as well as the nearby Atlantic Ocean as we observe each areas’ infinite varieties more closely, listen more carefully to original poetry, and perhaps begin to create our own. Many of the enclosed pictures might seem a bit odd.; initially we might miss their beauty at first sight. The whisper of the haiku emerges from its deep source within our emotional lives, hearts, and souls, often emerging from some mysterious spirit within our psyches, our imaginations. In a sense haiku is “found poetry,” in America the Beautiful, our beloved home, our paradise on earth, just waiting to be written.