Being rooted makes plants easier to photograph than animals, but plants do twitch with the breeze and ruin careful compositions. Cautiously optimistic, I shoot repeatedly and hope a few images catch the air’s calm moments. This post’s haiku and images suggest that sometimes optimists win.
Category: haiga
Henley’s Indomitable Trees
One of the few nineteenth century poems that move me is Invictus by William Ernest Henley. The poem’s spirit of unflinching defiance can be expressed in more contemporary ways. (Henley’s way is still good.) After one very contemporary way inspired by trees, we end with a quick riff on forms and freedom in poetry.
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An Oak Flips the Bird
Storm splinters tree trunk
and gets one-finger salute.
Tree can still leaf out.
Henley’s indomitable trees are not all oaks. On a short walk to see whether the oak that had flipped the bird could still leaf out, I saw a weeping willow that did not weep and a sugar maple that was not sweet. Shrugging off storm damage, they both just leafed out.
Quick Riff on Forms and Freedom
While not so terse as a haiku, Henley’s Invictus is about as direct and succinct as formal nineteenth century poetry can be. I don’t feel expected to forgive contortions or digressions motivated more by adherence to an elaborate form than by the topic at hand. Invictus sings, and part of the appeal is that its form does not feel like a burden.
In poetry and elsewhere, adherence to forms and rules is looser nowadays. That’s a mixed blessing. Robert Frost was basically correct when he said
Writing free verse is like playing tennis w/o a net.
Tho people often try, U can’t get good poetry by sprinkling obligatory line breaks on bad prose. But there are some good poems in utterly free verse. Here are links to a few that I saw while working on this post:
Two Slim Chances
While I have never visited the Galapagos Islands, I treasure a framed print of a photo taken there by Laura Zito, who captured a bright red crab against glistening wet black rock. What chance have I to see something close to home that looks much like that? Very slim. But still
Better Than No Chance at All
Helicopter seed
lands on shiny new asphalt.
No chance to grow here.
I walk away, then go back.
I move it to damp bare dirt.
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Sharing
Slow shutter needed.
Daffodil and tulip share
early morning light.
~ ~ ~ ~
There is enough for us all,
if we take less than we want.
I considered posting my photo wordlessly, with the post’s title as a hint that I have something beyond a nice image in mind. Too subtle. Compulsively explicit, I wrote a haiku. Then I expanded the haiku to a tanka.
I hesitated. The tanka’s last 2 lines might be too preachy. Then I read the Gandhi quote in a great collection of images and quotes: Our Beautiful, Broken World (curated by Mitch Teemley).
Thanks, Mitch. The time for subtlety is long gone.
Haiga with Several Time Scales
Haiku poems commonly deal with events on short time scales. In a split second, the frog jumps into the pond. In minutes, the sunset fades. In days, the cherry blossoms fall. How about decades? How about millennia? They can show up too, along with the split second that a camera’s shutter is open.
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Sunlit Moment
Mums are good silk fakes.
Rock is real and will outlast
both mums and viewer.
I dithered over whether to respond to
Scale ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #268
with the material above. With small differences in format, it was posted 2020-04-17. Tho usually reluctant to repeat myself, I’ve noticed that bloggers I respect sometimes do repost things they feel are still relevant. I’ve also noticed that 11 months is quite a while on a cyberspace time scale.
Oh well. It’s rare that I settle on a combination of angle and settings that I really like before the light fades or shifts. Seize the moment.
Rainbow Zen
The rainbow images that illustrate haiku here are in an elite group. (Wish the images were mine.) The rainbow does not just coexist with whatever else is in the scene; it works with the other elements and lifts a good image to greatness. A bonus awaits those willing to read the notes and credits at the end of this post.
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Arizona Sky
Wings gliding past arc,
high above Mogollon Rim:
raven and rainbow.
Out of Reach
Hard fingers rise up,
trying to grasp soft colors
as the rainbow fades.
Hard fingers rise up,
trying to grasp soft colors
as the rainbow fades.
No Pots of Gold
Seek ends of rainbows.
You will not find them? Okay.
The quest is enough.
Seek ends of rainbows.
You will not find them? Okay.
The quest is enough.
§: Notes and Credits
While there are zillions of fine photos of rainbows, the images used here are in an elite group. (Wish they were mine.) The rainbow does not just coexist with whatever else is in the scene; it works with the other elements and lifts a good image to greatness.
Subsection headings below are also links to pages with more detail.
§§: Harvey Stearn’s Photo of Raven and Rainbow
Click on the link above if U have any interest at all in how dramatic skies can contribute to landscape photos. No interest? Click anyway and U will soon have one. The photo I used comes near the end in a long series of splendid examples.
I first saw this photo as a standout among standouts in a collection curated by Mitch Teemley, whose blog has many great collections alongside funny and/or insightful original content. The idea of a haiku with what became the last line of Arizona Sky came to mind quickly, but writing other lines I liked took longer. Much longer.
§§: Randy Olson’s Photo of Termite Mound and Rainbow
I wrote No Pots of Gold and later found this splendid photo to illustrate it (and inspire some haibun prose). The photo proved to be a gift that keeps on giving; it inspired Out of Reach.
§§: Naturalism in Haiku
Rainbows are one kind of spectrum. There are many other series rather like the somewhat quantitative R-O-Y-G-B-I-V of rainbows, and sometimes it helps to think of those spectra as rainbows. Two examples follow.
This post’s series of haiku exemplifies the spectrum of naturalism in haiku. Like Arizona Sky, many haiku are specific descriptions of a momentary observation. Like No Pots of Gold, some are toward the other extreme: general expressions of attitudes toward life, with at most a metaphorical reference to nature. Out of Reach is in between.
There is also a spectrum of compliance with the 5-7-5 rule, which is revered by some and reviled by others. Like most of my own haiku, the ones in this post comply. Tho I do respect the 5-7-5 rule, I also wrote a haiku that goes 3-2-5 and a haiku with just 2 lines. No apologies.
Don’t submit blindly to restrictions on
subject matter and nuances of form,
for haiku or any other kind of art.
Let the rainbows glow.
subject matter and nuances of form,
for haiku or any other kind of art.
Let the rainbows glow.
Hope at Sunrise
Patrick Jennings’ challenge #259 salutes the sun in the great outdoors. Sunlight is both a source of hope and something to hope for. The same is true in more intimate settings, and the New Year got off to a good start at sunrise on 2021-01-01.
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Hope ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #259
Morning Sun on Winter Wreath
Bird, bow, and berries
scatter rays of hope to me.
Today may be good.
Seeking Solitude
«You may use my image in your post, or any image you have created.» So say the rules of Patrick Jennings’ series of challenges. For challenge #257, I did both at once. (Details are at the end of this post.) The image illustrates my haiku about solitude, which is sometimes an aspiration rather than a condition.
Solitude ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #257
Not Alone
Lonely in the crowd
and weary of empty talk,
I seek solitude.
Image Notes and Credits
I was intrigued by the landscape’s azure sky in
While the sky is fine just as it is, it is also a good place for an overlay with text or another image.
I had already used a downloaded image of a wearisome crowd to illustrate the first 2 lines of my haiku Not Alone:
© Igor Zakowski | 123RF Stock Photo
(Image has been cropped.)
I decided to illustrate the whole haiku by overlaying the landscape’s sky with the crowd image, opaque at the top and then gradually fading out of sight toward the bottom. By the time I noticed that my photo editor does not support opacity gradients in overlays, I had my heart set on the project. Hmmm. Overall opacity of 60% in the overlay looks good, apart from the sharp horizontal line at the bottom of the overlay. Hmmm. My editor does have enough functionality to make that boundary a little blurry and wobbly, with one eye of Ms Purple Hair left staring at the viewer.
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Snow Fall
Carpe Diem Haiku Kai has the theme “autumn leaves” for November of 2020 and the subtheme “colors of life” for the CDHK episode posted 2020-11-17. Where I live, snow rarely falls before the leaves do. When it does, the resulting colors may foretell the colors of awakening life in the coming spring.
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Carpe Diem #1839 colors of life
Snow Fall
Bright white and strong pink:
early snow on burning bush
predicts apple blooms.
Ozzie Had His Head on Straight
David Eppley’s photo of a bald eagle named Ozzie was among the fan favorites in the Weather Channel’s 2016 Photo Contest. The same excellent photo inspired a haiku that can respond to a CDHK challenge about daffodils. Really.
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Carpe Diem #1832 Narcissus (Daffodils)
Mythornithology
When we saw himself,
Narcissus forgot to drink.
Eagle had more sense.
Click here to see more images and read interesting facts about flowers in the genus Narcissus (AKA daffodils).
Click here to see more images from the Weather Channel’s 2016 Photo Contest.
Eight Years and Counting
The year 2020 is not all bad. Carpe Diem Haiku Kai (which is one of the islands of light in an ocean of darkness) celebrated its eighth anniversary on 2020-10-01. The fine haiku poet who founded and curates CDHK suggested writing “a nice festive haiku or tanka” for the occasion.
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CDHK Celebrates its 8th anniversary – Carpe Diem 1829
Introduction to a new month.
My response salutes the pluralism and progressivism implicit in CDHK. We can honor and build upon the past w/o being confined by it.
Old Pond & Beyond
To sing of all that’s
true and good and beautiful,
write haiku poems.
Then and Now
From a CDHK challenge: «… create a haiku with the … “baransu” (balance) … technique … through association on the separated lines of the haiku.» The challenge goes on to illustrate how an association with one of the ideas in each line can inspire the next line. (Of course, it is also good to have some unexpected twists between lines.) Here are two balanced haiku for an unbalanced world, with pivotal word(s) highlighted.
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Carpe Diem Exploring The Beauty Of Haiku #1828 Baransu (balance)
Pilgrim Then
Shinto shrine ritual:
wash hands before entering.
Predates pandemic.
Carrier Now
He rants with no mask.
Virus-laden spit may fly
beyond two meters.
Hmmm. Now spit can fly beyond two megameters.
Image Credits
© David Carillet | 123RF Stock Photo
Light Show
The weather is warm and will soon be hot, so I leave my camera behind when I smuggle in a quick walk between chores. As Murphy’s Law predicts, I see something I want to photograph. While the scene itself is common enough, the way light caroms off part of it (and then to me) is not. Oh well, for now I can write a haiku. Maybe later I can get an image close to what I see?
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Red-winged Blackbird
Sun shines. Bird mutters.
Perched on power line, flicks tail.
Day-Glo epaulets.
Hmmm. Buy a download of a promising large image (6750×4500 pixels):
© Steve Byland | 123RF Stock Photo
Rotate it. Crop tightly (down to 635×912). Boost saturation and visual contrast. Yes, the result is like the red and gold on black that I saw when the light was just right:
Sometimes it takes a good deal of editing to tell the truth.
Going Gray?
Some photos need color, some are better in grayscale (aka “black and white”), and many are good either way. Here are some examples and a tanka that touches on the symbolism of color in general. Visit the links to see more examples.
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Bare Branches
Some go to grayscale
when form is “all” that matters.
I keep azure skies.
My world will gray soon enough.
I keep color and press on.
If somebody chooses to emphasize form and texture in a photo of bare branches by going to grayscale, I am likely to disagree with (but respect) that choice. So far, I have always wanted to keep color in my own photos, often with minor adjustments in my photo editor. Here are some examples where grayscale would be goofy:
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While I have no qualms about really needing color in most of my own photos, there is more to be said about the ways various photographers have used color or grayscale. Some examples follow.
A somber poem with grayness as a metaphor has been illustrated by a photo of a mostly gray scene. But it is a color photo, and rightly so. The subtle color is a reminder that the grayness is there in the scene, not an artifact of how the image is displayed.
Of course, I admire the photographic pioneers whose images were compelling despite then-obligatory grayscale. Some classic photos are best left in grayscale anyway, and contemporary photographers may choose partial desaturation. There are even a few photos that benefit from going all the way to true black and white, where every pixel is either pitch black or stark white. Scroll down from the header image in Choices to see an example.
She Giggled
I am not just being ornery when I avoid common subjects for haiku or photos. Seldom do I see a common subject in a context that tickles my muse with the possibility that I might say something not already said many times, often better than I can say it anyway. On 2020-04-28, my muse giggled at the sight of a popular haiku subject displayed with a cheerful color combination that is special to me.
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Seen on Green
Swaying in light wind,
branches only seem to weep.
Pink cherry blossoms.
Haiga with Several Time Scales
Haiku poems commonly deal with events on short time scales. In a split second, the frog jumps into the pond. In minutes, the sunset fades. In days, the cherry blossoms fall. How about decades? How about millennia? They can show up too, along with the split second that a camera’s shutter is open.
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Sunlit Moment
Mums are good silk fakes.
Rock is real and will outlast
both mums and viewer.
Dunno why the WordPress algorithm for choosing “Related” posts missed the one that is by far the most closely related: Weather’s Works.
