Volume XXVI, Number 4: December 2024
;Editors' Choices
slowly turning north
the dragon
on the weathervane
Gordon Brown
Las Vegas, Nevada
beach stone
some of the worry
already gone
Pat Davis
Concord, New Hampshire
moss
the quiet work
of a stone mason
Laurie Greer
Washington, District of Columbia
The Heron's Nest Award
slowly turning north
the dragon
on the weathervane
Gordon Brown
This haiku—much like a weathervane—is a masterful work of art and machinery, and the inexorably lengthening shadow it casts from its perch on some imagined rooftop belies its apparent simplicity.
The weathervane works by a straightforward principle: the wind blows, and it spins on its spindle to point back in the wind's direction. Nonetheless, this principle is somewhat counterintuitive. Although we see the arrow (or narrowest point) of a weathervane point towards the direction from which the wind is blowing, this happens because the wind blows it in the opposite direction. (A north wind, in other words, actually blows the weathervane towards the south.) This works because weathervanes are heavier and larger at the rear, allowing them to catch the wind and swivel away from it, pointing back in its direction.1
Brown's haiku works in a similar manner: "slowly" is the first word in the poem, but we don't understand what exactly is turning, or why, until we reach that very final word, which points us right back to the start—and the direction the wind is coming from.
"Okay," I hear you say. "But can we talk about the dragon?!"
Indeed we can!
For all the technical prowess of that "slowly" spreading across the entire haiku like a winter shadow, it's the dragon that makes this poem so memorable. Consider some other common weathervane designs: "the arrow" would be prosaic and unremarkable; "the chicken" somewhat more interesting but ultimately dull; "the ship" little better.
Instead, we start the poem by seeing something turn to the north, and then we see "the dragon." It's a startling moment, when we become unmoored from our everyday world. The weathervane in the last line returns us to reality, but the impact still stands.
With its matching of technical skill and artistry, Brown's haiku pushes us out of the ordinary, into the realm between reality and fantasy, waking world and dream. It refreshes, like a northern wind.
Will we lose sight of the dragon in our minds? Will we go back to a world where a weathervane is simply a shaped piece of metal?
Perhaps. But—as with all good haiku—the impact it has on us will fade only slowly.
Stewart C Baker
December, 2024
[1] Knoblock, Glenn A. and Wemmer, David W. (2018) Weathervanes of New England, McFarland. page 3.