A Handful of Haiku

Here are samples of haiku verses I received from readers. Great job, all of you! Thanks!

From Kathy:

Like drums, thunder booms

Waking the dozing storm clouds -

They spill tears like wine.

Hot blueberry bursts,

Purple sweetness in my mouth,

Scones and tea for one.

From Tullik:

Fruit fly in the wine

"Back again at happy hour?"

Lord Buddha cries "HELP!"

From Penny:

Golden leaves descend

floating, waving, saluting

an earthen blanket

From LaLa (via email):

Wind blowing the leaves

Clearing grass before snow

While mulching flowers

And three more of my own (I have been writing one a day):

6 November 2013

Wild geese resting on

Calm surface of the pond - a

long way yet to go

7 November 2013

Ice holds back the Thames

Frozen birds fall from the sky.

Beware! Don't look up.

8 November 2013

Small brown body floats

In birdbath bowl while leaves of

gold serve as a shroud.

Having a Haiku Day

In regards to Basho and his haiku from yesterday's post, I decided to try my hand at composing a brief verse or two. The 'rules' of haiku: each poem is made up of three lines with five, seven, and five syllables, respectively. The subject is usually an image in nature and captures a moment in time. 

The English translations of yesterday don't exactly follow the meter 5/7/5/ meter, but I am sure the syllable count in the original Japanese does.

I poked around and found a website that helps the budding haiku-ist build a poem. Begin typing in the box at the top of the web page and the syllables are counted for you - you won't have to use your fingers to keep track!  Below are five little gems I came up with this morning. Go to write a haiku and see what you can do. Please share your efforts with me in the comments. Have fun!

Autumn colors blaze 

on hillsides and park lanes - time

to light the home fires

**

Last rose of summer

Glowing pink on trellis in yard -

Hand me my clippers

**

Farmers market jewels

Still ripe with reds and yellows -

Where's the olive oil?

**

Bacon sizzling in pan,

Fresh eggs wanting to be cracked -

Pour the coffee please

**

Bookshelves groan with the

Weight of a million words, ideas - 

Time to purge perhaps

On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho

Before there was Twitter, there was haiku. 

Haiku is the Japanese poetic form that consists roughly of three lines of five, seven, and five syllables respectively. The verse is usually of an image focusing on nature and most often ends with an insightful leap. 

This is what I enjoy about haiku - its brevity and its brain flip at the end.

I picked up a slim book of haiku poetry, On Love and Barley, by Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) at Hattie's Books in Brunswick, Georgia. It contains 253 poems and some lovely Japanese illustrations from an album of paintings by Ike no Taiga. It took me about 20 minutes to read these intriguing verses. 

(If you would like to give writing haiku a try, here is a link to a website that might help get you started  - Haiku.)

In his introduction to this volume published in 1985, the translator Lucien Stryk, writes:

Throughout his life as a wanderer Basho sought to celebrate: whether his eyes turned to mountain or gorge, whether his ears heard thunder or birdsong, whether his foot brushed flower or mud, he was intensely alive to the preciousness of all that shared the world with him. 

Here is a sampling:

Yellow rose petals

thunder - 

a waterfall.

   **     

Tomb, bend

to autumn wind - 

my sobbing.

**

From the heart

of the sweet peony,

a drunken bee.

**

Skylark sings all

day, and day

not long enough.

**

Autumn - even

birds and clouds

look old.

Savannah, Georgia - October 23, 2013

I forgot to take a photo of the front of the bookstore we visited today
 but here is its business card...

Mostly a day of driving from St. Augustine to Savannah. We did stop in Brunswick, Georgia and stumbled across Hattie's Books which is located downtown. It is a clean, small independent bookstore with a nice selection of new and used books along with books by local Southern authors.

The store sponsors two book clubs. This month the Daytime Book Club is reading The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro. The Evening Book Club is reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed. Marcia is the owner of the shop and her assistant is Mr. Wiggles, a well-read schnauzer.

Although we only stopped for a quick visit, I found a sweet used copy of haiku poems by Basho that has black and white Japanese illustrations. Rose says it is a beautiful book and I must agree.