Category: haiku

haiga, haiku, philosophy, photography, science

Two on Mortality in 3-5-3

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
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~ Mortality #1 ~
\ Emergent
\ from dancing atoms,
\ life is short.
~ Mortality #2 ~
\ Let’s live life
\ with defiant joy,
\ all the way.

Carpe Diem Haiku Kai … #1850 dried grass

“Dried grass” in the challenge comes from Basho’s last haiku, written as he was dying.  My response imagines him rallying to console his grieving companions.

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haiga, haiku, philosophy, photography, tanka

Two Slim Chances

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
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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– above post (on phone) or beside it (on desktop). –
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flowers, haiga, haiku, photography, tanka

Sharing

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon

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.

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flowers, haiga, haiku, photography

Haiga with Several Time Scales

Posted on by Mellow Curmudgeon
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.

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