MAGA memories,
so like these silk orchid blooms.
Vivid but not real.
Vivid ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #358
Early morning light
sets a gecko aglow, but
it’s not a gecko.
My haiga in response to
Early ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #357
harks back to a painting by René Magritte that is a fun way to make a point in epistemology.
Five began last fall.
Just two have not yet rotted.
More rocks are ready.
Cloudless Monday #1
|Cold morning.
|Sunday’s fallen snow
|garbs the pine.
Cloudless Monday #2
|Before long,
|snow warmed by sun will
|fall again.
“Bracts” say botanists.
“Those red things are not petals.”
I just call them leaves.
Buy again next fall?
No, it’s good year after year,
until mice find it.
First few cold days ask
“Who can overwinter?”
Katydids cannot.
When I wrote the original version of my haiku, I was aware that some insects can overwinter as adults, even where winters are harsher than in the Mexican mountains favored by monarch butterflies. Bark beetles are a dreaded example. Seeing a lethargic insect shaped like familiar crickets (but bigger and more colorful), I wrote a haiku voicing the unlikely hope that the insect (later nicknamed “Kermit” after the famous green frog) might be able to overwinter:
Last few mild days ask
“Ready to overwinter?”
Cricket moves slowly.
A helpful comment by Sue Ranscht on my post with that haiku prompted me to dig a little deeper. Kermit was a young male katydid. Winters where I live are mild enough for his mother’s eggs but still too harsh for him. Kermit ran out of time before maturing. That makes the middle line of my original haiku more like a taunt than a sincere question, so I revised the haiku to be an elegy for Kermit the katydid.
Last few mild days ask
“Ready to overwinter?”
Cricket moves slowly.
Ignoring hints
from tulip tree and maple,
elm stays green, for now.
Sundown where I am
is sunup to someone else,
a world’s width away.
Photo © Patrick JenningsSundown ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #351
Riding the wind and
calm about impermanence,
clouds form and vanish.
Calm ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #348
From a distant sun,
some light finds another sun
and can shine again.
Glowing yellow like the sun,
spider waits for prey to come.
Like many juvenile birds, this male cardinal sat still and looked befuddled, then changed position a little, and then sat still and looked befuddled. With his face centered in the focus frame and a moderately fast shutter speed, he should have been in focus. My camera’s autofocus probably got distracted by the twigs all around him. While my camera has good manual overrides for most of its automatic choices, its manual focusing is a lame joke. So I made lemonade from lemons with the final line of my haiku.
Memories linger
tho nobody is still here
to remember them.
Visit Lingering to see the inspiration.
Redden, then blacken,
then become any color
in a bird’s feathers.
double or single
“Rose of Sharon” or “Althea”
sunny or cloudy
Mellow Curmudgeon 