Count

- "5-7-5-7-7" gate-allow-text-pattern: '^[0-9]+([,\s-]+[0-9]+)*$|^[A-Za-z]+$' ---

Cherry met Count in the woodland grove on a spring morning, when the cherry-blossoms were just beginning to open.

Cherry had been traveling through the grove — Cherry travels through the grove every spring, every summer, every autumn, every winter; she carries her poetry-coach role with her through the seasons — and she had been trying to write a haiku. She had been carrying a small bamboo brush and a small folded piece of rice-paper. She had been muttering syllables to herself as she walked. She had been on syllable seven of line two and had been unable to settle on the next-counted syllable. She had been frustrated.

(Cherry, for context, is a cherry-blossom-pink figure in a plain blue traveling tunic. She has been the HaikuQuest academy's traveling poetry coach for many years. She also carries, as part of her work, the cultural-tradition responsibility — the Japanese poetic tradition that gave the world haiku and tanka is not Cherry's tradition by birth, but Cherry honors it carefully. She teaches the forms attributed to the Japanese tradition and she names the technical terms — kireji, kigo, on — in their original language with proper attribution. She does not claim the tradition as her own. She visits 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."