Swallows skim the glass
Of a beaver pond, drinking
From their reflections.
Tag: haiku
Snow day and dishwashing haiku
Just as the deep snow here had melted to half-gone and I’d broken usable trails through the month-old snowpack remaining, a new storm blew in, dropped another five or six inches, and undid my hope for a winter thaw. Two more storms over the next three days are expected to fluff things up even more. While I work up the energy to go out and re-break trails €”for myself and for animals, on whom this unnaturally long winter has been very stressful €”I thought I’d try something different at WIZ to pass time.
Traditionally, haiku express insight into the movement of a season across the face of a landscape. But since the form is of a meditative mind, its nature can be stretched to explore particulars of a variety of conditions. In a recent conversation with greenfrog, topics of awareness and dishwashing flowed together. The prospect of dishwashing haiku arose. Well €¦ and why not?
So for WIZ’s next winter while-away open invitation, the name is dishwashing (which I happen to find especially pleasant in wintertime); the game is haiku.
To begin:
Warm tap water, cool
Winter light pouring in streak
Plates in kitchen sync.
Let the One-liners begin.
Winter haiku
[Post edited 12/17.] Since this haiku chain launched itself before I had a chance to lay groundwork, I thought I’d backtrack and provide some perhaps useful information.
A haiku is a classical Japanese poetical form, usually 17 syllables all in a single line in Japanese, but I understand that there are longer and shorter forms. In English, haiku usually take the form of one short line of 5 syllables, a long line of 7 syllables, and a short line of 5 syllables. I’ve misplaced all my haiku notes, but you can find out more here or here.
Here’s my beginning haiku:
Colorful beads drape
Desert grasses–frost parsing
Light’s long white sentence.
Haiku along Earth’s Sky-Path
by greenfrog
Fall’s day-stars now gleam
Through leafing willow twigs. Spent
Bud-shells crunch on Path.
Cross-posted at In Limine: On the threshold, at the beginning.