full moon
our bed
half empty
paper wasp: a journal of haiku 14(4) spring 2008
Author comments:
I am returning to haiku and other forms of poetry after putting my creative work on the back burner for many years. I've been revisiting my early poems, published and unpublished. This particular haiku was one of several that paper wasp: a journal of haiku published in 2008. It was my first poetry acceptance. I was delighted then, as I am now sharing the poem again.
Close to 20 years later, it's a little hard to recreate my mindset on the day I wrote it, but I suspect this poem was inspired by circumstance. At the time I was working on a social science master's degree, and my university campus was located 100 traffic-clogged miles away from the home I shared with my husband. At that point I was staying near campus for most of the week and only driving home on select weekends. So, even though my marriage was solid (and remains so after three decades), my husband and I spent most of our nights apart, "our bed / half empty."
I'll also mention that my husband and I were (and still are) cinephiles with a special fondness for horror movies. I liked leaving the poem open for an interpretation related to lycanthropy (one partner's absence linked to the "full moon"), alongside other possible readings.