Category: haiku

birds, haiga, haiku, humor, photography

Teenager

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon

Too old for childhood;

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too young for raising children.

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Blurry persona.

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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.

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haiga, haiku, photography

Abandoned Temple

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
The haiku here is a 5-7-5 version of the last 3 lines from a poem by Patrick Jennings.

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Memories linger
tho nobody is still here
to remember them.

Visit Lingering to see the inspiration.

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haiga, haiku, photography

Basking Snake

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
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I glanced down and broke stride just in time to avoid stepping on this snake, then took some photos.  I was briefly puzzled that the snake seemed to have chosen dappled sun for basking when full sun was available, but the whole driveway may well have been in dappled sun when the snake chose a spot earlier in the morning.  It’s more fun to imagine that the snake had to rethink choosing looks over practicality.

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birds, haiga, haiku, photography

Vocal Visitor

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon

Caw from unseen bird.
Crows are louder and shriller.
Could be a raven.

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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!

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