Gourds bask in sunlight;
shadows sing a silent song.
They both contribute.
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.
Awning. Window frame.
Sunlight flows between and forms
arrow head on drape.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Wet thunder booms as
water sweeps itself away.
A rainbow lingers.
Photo of Iguazu Falls © Marcio Chagas | Unsplash
(Image has been cropped.)
My haiku was inspired by the contrast between loud rushing water and a silent steady rainbow, as pondered by Boris Glikman in a prose poem about a visit to Niagara Falls. The contrast cried out to be displayed in the kind of deliberate swerve common in haiku poetry, often between the middle and final lines.
I wrote the haiku, searched for an appropriate image to make a haiga, and was happy to see a hover caption (on one of the Unsplash pages linking to the photo used here) that placed the photo at Niagara Falls. I am grateful to Andrew Porteus for noticing that it’s really at Iguazu Falls and providing a much needed adjustment to the photo credit when posting the haiga to the Niagara Falls Poetry Project.
My blunder reminds me of my one point of agreement with Ronald Reagan and a great meme:
Meme as posted by Troll Quotes on Pinterest
Mellow Curmudgeon 