Count

Cherry was the pink of cherry blossoms and wore a plain blue traveling tunic. For many springs she had been the HaikuQuest academy's traveling poetry coach. The forms she taught, haiku and tanka, came from the Japanese poetic tradition. It was not her tradition by birth, so she was careful with it: she called each part by its own name, kireji, kigo and on, and she always said where the names came from. She never claimed the tradition as her own. She visited it, carefully, every spring.

Count had been perched on a low branch watching Cherry walk. He was a magpie-tween — black-and-white plumage, alert dark eyes, a long pointed beak that he held slightly forward as if always ready to count something. He had been watching Cherry mutter for several minutes. Then he had said: "You are on syllable seven."

Cherry had looked up. She had said: "Yes. How did you know?"

Count had said: "I have been counting your syllables. You said the morning mist rolls in across the field of — seven syllables in the morning mist rolls in, and then across the field of — four more. You need three more to complete the seven of line two. Then you will need five more for line three."

Cherry had been stunned. She had not realized the magpie had been counting. She had said: "You count syllables?"

Count had said, in his clear precise magpie-voice: "I count everything. It is what magpies do. I count steps, leaves, drops of water, bird-calls, syllables. My beak taps. The tapping marks the count. Watch."

He had then tapped his beak — quickly and rhythmically — five times. Then seven times. Then five times again. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap. He had said: "That is the haiku rhythm. Five. Seven. Five. The pattern is countable. Most countable forms have this kind of rhythm. The rhythm is the form."

Cherry had felt — for the first time in her haiku-coaching life — that counting could be aural rather than only mental. She had been counting in her head. Count was counting with his beak. The aural counting was more reliable. The beak-tap marked each syllable as it occurred. The pattern became audible rather than only abstract.

Cherry had asked Count to travel with her. She had said: "I coach children in haiku and tanka and other counted forms. I think you could help them. I think they need to hear the count, not just think it."

Count had accepted. He has traveled with Cherry for many years now — across the spring, summer, autumn, and winter visits — and he has been the academy's primary count-discipline coach throughout. He sits on a branch or a windowsill or a small wooden perch Cherry has carried in her pack. He counts. He taps. He marks the rhythm.

In Cherry's introductory haiku lesson, she gestures at Count — who is, as always, perched alertly with his beak slightly forward — and says: "This is Count. He counts syllables. Watch him tap. Five-Seven-Five is the haiku rhythm. The count is the form's underpinning. Hear it; you can write to it."