Like still photos, many haiku capture a moment in time. My first foray into capturing motion in haiku yielded 2 surprises. Here comes another, in time for the centennial on 11-11 of the armistice that ended the fighting in World War I.
Let’s start by summarizing the older surprises that I posted in response to a CDHK episode. Credits for the images below are at the end of this post for readability.
The first surprise was that that so much motion could fit in a haiku:
Redemptive Trickle
A shell exploded!
Water slowly filled the hole
and held the whole sky.
Of course, my haiku that is like a movie was inspired by this classic World War I haiku that is like a still photo:
© Maurice Betz
A shell hole
In its water
Held the whole sky.
The second surprise was that I did not have a stable preference between these haiku. Like someone viewing the classic ambiguous image that can be seen as a duck facing one way or as a rabbit facing the other, I flip-flopped between the still photo by Betz and the movie by me. So did at least 2 readers of my old post.
Here is the new third surprise. After writing yet another shell hole haiku, I finally have a stable preference. My preferred haiku is like a movie that starts after the explosion:
Healing Trickle
Water slowly filled
the shell blast’s muddy crater.
It held the whole sky.
Image Sources
Unable to find appropriate and affordable period images, I used contemporary images: a generic explosion and a puddle that looks much like the water-filled shell hole. The puddle photo has been cropped to be more nearly square.
