{"id":4680,"date":"2026-06-26T02:03:52","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T10:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=4680"},"modified":"2026-06-25T20:13:57","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T04:13:57","slug":"a-roundup-of-zentao-senryu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2026\/06\/26\/a-roundup-of-zentao-senryu\/","title":{"rendered":"A Roundup of Zentao Senryu"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been on a road trip helping my partner deal with some family matters, which included carting home boxes of things that families tend to treasure. While I\u2019m almost finished with a book that I think will resonate with other writers in particular, I am way too wiped out to summon the intellectual process necessary to do it justice.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m sharing some of the senryu I call \u201cZentao\u201d that I write every morning. Since I\u2019ve been driving through Oregon, I\u2019ll start with this one:<\/p>\n

Oh, a volcano!
\nAhead. Now behind. Three more!
\nMust be Oregon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We drove home down the eastern side of the Cascades, so I think at one point we actually saw five at once.<\/p>\n

A senryu about volcanos needs a picture of one. I didn\u2019t take many pictures this trip, but here\u2019s a picture of Mt. St. Helen\u2019s I took some years back after we stumbled onto a ranger lecture on the history of its 1980 eruption. (It\u2019s a Washington volcano, but you can see it from Oregon as well.)<\/p>\n

\"Mt.<\/p>\n

My original reason to do a daily senryu was to capture how I was feeling each morning. For obvious reasons, a lot of them have turned out to be political:<\/p>\n

Daily things to check:
\nweather, fires, air quality,
\nthreats to democracy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wars. Stupid tech. Grift.
\nA pretense that it\u2019s all normal.
\nNot civilized yet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

People came together
\nto watch them scrape off his name.
\nBuild on that action.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or about broligarchs:<\/p>\n

They think they\u2019re so smart
\nsince they\u2019ve made so much money.
\nNot civilized yet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Don\u2019t take any advice
\nfrom broligarchs who think that we
\nare just NPCs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Those developing tech
\nshould be required to study
\nDonna Haraway\u2019s work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some days I strive for philosophical insight:<\/p>\n

Simple feels good,
\nbut it leaves out way too much.
\nLearn to think in depth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Play well with others,
\nbut stand up for what\u2019s right, and
\nask the hard questions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cThe world not yet lost.\u201d
\nMaybe nothing\u2019s lost yet,
\njust being found anew.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And since I\u2019ve just been on a road trip across a couple of states, which reminds me of both how beautiful our country is and how much destruction of both people and places we\u2019ve wrought, a couple on those contradictions:<\/p>\n

Traveling the U.S.
\nSo many trucks and chain stores.
\nSo much great beauty.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ocean, hills (still green), palm trees.
\nFreeways, cars, so many buildings.
\nComplex paradise.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And, of course, cats. After giving ourselves a year to mourn the loss of our last elderly cat, we got two young cats. It might have been the best decision of the last several years.<\/p>\n

Here’s Shadow:<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

Cats are wonderful.
\nCats create abundant chaos.
\nNot contradictory.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And here’s her brother, Piper:<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

And finally, a bit of self-evaluation:<\/p>\n

I contradict myself.
\nI went to church with the space program.
\nWhat would you expect?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been on a road trip helping my partner deal with some family matters, which included carting home boxes of things that families tend to treasure. While I\u2019m almost finished with a book that I think will resonate with other writers in particular, I am way too wiped out to summon the intellectual process necessary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91,56,367],"tags":[186,185],"class_list":["post-4680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animals-pets","category-life-experiences","category-travel","tag-senryu","tag-zentao"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4680"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4684,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4680\/revisions\/4684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}