flowers, haiga, haiku, photography, seasons

Snow Fall

Carpe Diem Haiku Kai has the theme “autumn leaves” for November of 2020 and the subtheme “colors of life” for the CDHK episode posted 2020-11-17.  Where I live, snow rarely falls before the leaves do.  When it does, the resulting colors may foretell the colors of awakening life in the coming spring.
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Carpe Diem #1839 colors of life

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Snow Fall
|Bright white and strong pink:
|early snow on burning bush
|predicts apple blooms.

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haiga, haiku, photography, seasons, serendipity

Between Seasons in 2019

Where I live, 11-19 is usually too late for fall colors and too early for snowflakes.  Recent past and near future met when Fortune smiled on an out-of-season CDHK challenge posted 2019-11-14.
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Carpe Diem #1781 The Quest For A New Masterpiece Continues … colorful autumn

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Between Seasons #1
|Lost autumn colors,
|but garden flag remembers.
|Snow on power lines.

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The rules and examples for this challenge allow marking the cut with punctuation and tweaking the cut when swapping the initial and final lines.  Let’s do that.

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Between Seasons #2
|Snow on power lines.
|But garden flag remembers
|lost autumn colors.

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haiku, history, seasons

Winter Waiting

However bleak and dark it may be, winter is unlike the bleak dark periods of history.  Winter’s onset and duration are roughly predictable.  Like the beavers in my haiku, those who prepare can often endure.
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A Google image search led to the images in this post; clicking on them will jump to the source credits at the end.  The haiku in this post is my response to

Carpe Diem Universal Jane #8 gathering clouds

with special thanks to one of Jane’s haiku about winter:

© Jane Reichold
|gathering clouds
|heavy and dark with holding
|unfallen flakes

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Quiet Endurance
|Cold. Pond iced over.
|Silent snow on tomb-like mound.
|Beavers wait it out.

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However bleak and dark it may be, winter is unlike the bleak dark periods of history.  Winter’s onset and duration are roughly predictable.  Like beavers, those who prepare can often endure.  Too bad history is not like that.

Sources

I wrote the haiku while commenting on a wintry post by Poet Rummager that I liked.  The post did not mention snow or beavers, but inspiration is quirky.  Tho I liked my haiku enough to post it all by itself, I decided to wait until I had found images that would clarify it for readers unfamiliar with the way beavers wait out winter in their lodges.  Those who would like to see more detail can find it on a very readable webpage that was created for course requirements at Hamilton College.

The photo of the outside of a lodge in winter is from a well-illustrated post by Harlan Schwartz on the Canadian Canoe Routes website.  The photo was shared on PhotoBucket and downloaded from there.

The drawing of the inside of a lodge in winter is from the book Why the Adirondacks Look the Way They Do by Mike Storey (Nature Knows Best Books, 2006).  The drawing was reproduced in a very positive online review by Paul Grondahl and downloaded from there.