Lifeless? No, leafless.
They hold their breath all winter,
exhale leaves in spring.
– above post (on phone) or beside it (on desktop). –
Lifeless? No, leafless.
They hold their breath all winter,
exhale leaves in spring.
No longer pretty,
potted tulips catch my eye
until petals fall.
Water in glassware
plays prism with morning light.
Serendipity.
Sunlight on the pine
caroms off lens surfaces
and shines from within.
Caw from unseen bird.
Crows are louder and shriller.
Could be a raven.
Overlay © John Cobb | Unsplash
While my own sightings are few and long ago, I believe ravens still inhabit the region where I live and am confident that I can distinguish the croaking caw of a raven from the canonical caw of a crow. (Don’t hike much any more; still big on alliteration.) I also have some of indigenous folklore’s admiration of ravens, so I celebrated hearing one with a haiku. That posed a problem.
An ordinary image of a raven would not work for my haiku about an unseen bird thought to be a raven. I considered posting the haiku by itself, but I like images. Hmmm. I can photograph the nondescript view toward where the call seemed to originate. Can I then find and tweak an image of a raven to make a ghostly overlay that fits the mood of the haiku? Yes!
Snow on lawn.
Tracks from last mowing,
seen again.
Gourds bask in sunlight;
shadows sing a silent song.
They both contribute.
Seen thru bare branches
that thrash in an angry wind,
Xmas lights shimmer.
Cherry hibernates,
safe under pine’s watchful eye.
A few leaves linger.
11-07 |
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11-24 |
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11-26 |
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The cherry had one last leaf on 11-26.
Did it sing Nunc dimittis before it fell on 11-30?
The sound of dry rain
fills the air above my yard.
“Keep the rake handy.”
October
Bright sun and cool air;
azure skies and pumpkin pies.
Leaves fall in glory.
Silver Savior
The crowning glory
of our civilization
is, of course, duct tape.
Glory ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #334
Still-green oak
will follow maple
in due time.
Grumpy dragon
stays outside photo frame.
It’s a bad scales day.
Still green and growing,
cherry meets older maple
and finds a mentor.
Some leaves change color.
I wait for a pot of gold
to end a rainbow.
Waiting ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #330
Defiance ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #328
An earlier version of this post responded to a challenge inspired by Basho’s last haiku, written when he knew he was dying. Contributors were asked to imagine Basho writing a haiku for his closest followers from his deathbed. While I admired the resulting excellent sad poems, I defied the expectation of sadness and imagined Basho rallying briefly to encourage his companions with a pair of short haiku in 3-5-3.
My response to the previous challenge bungled the initial line of Mortality #2. My first thought was that Basho might tell his followers to
Live your lives / with defiant joy, / …
Telling people like me how to live is a reliable way to elicit angry defiance, so I rejected my first thought, neglected to defy my own fondness for alliteration, and settled on
Let’s live life / with defiant joy, / …
despite some misgivings. Hmmm. Wish I had used
I lived life / with defiant joy, / …
as what Basho might say on his deathbed. Hmmm. I can use it now in the present tense because I am still fairly healthy for my age, in defiance of the odds against those who bungle things more consequential than a line of poetry. So I use it in the revised Mortality #2 here, with defiant joy.