Saturday Haiku: Grand Tetons

green spruce trees gracing
a golden mountain meadow
beneath snowy peaks

 

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Image: Grand Tetons National Park, Wyoming

Artist: Tony Bennett (Antony Benedetto)*

*The legendary Tony Bennett retired from performing at the age of 95. His career spanned eight decades. Famous for his singing career, he also had a passion for painting. Today's post is part of a series of haiku inspired by Mr. Bennett's artwork (when he paints, he uses his given name, Antony Benedetto).

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Saturday Haiku: Collapse

 

sometimes the earth shakes
disagreements forgotten
in the search for life 

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Photo from The Wall Street Journal via Mint: "Civilians look for survivors under the rubble of collapsed buildings in Kahramanmaras, close to the quake's epicentre, the day after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the country's southeast, on February 7, 2023." (Photo: AFP)

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Saturday Haiku: Winter Storm

My haiku post from 9 years ago. after a paralyzing storm in Birmingham, Alabama. I have friends in Texas who experienced a similar winter storm this past week. - CK
 

  On a winter’s day

       nature casts her icy net,

       brings a fierce sabbath.

                                       

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Photo: Birmingham News photo, "when a snowstorm brought travel to a halt."
Credit: Joe Songer at http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2014/01/birmingham_winter_storm_qa_for.html



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Saturday Haiku: Winter Blue Sky

 bare oak branches sway
under a blue winter sky
remnants of a nest

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Photo by Charles Kinnaird

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Saturday Haiku: January Rain

 

window tightly closed
to the January rains
a robin appears

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Photo by Charles Kinnaird

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Saturday Haiku: Wintertime

 the still of winter
brings all the town together
to keep life kindled

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Image: Winter Landscape with Skaters (1608) at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam
Artist: Hendrick Avercamp
Medium: Oil on oak 

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Saturday Haiku: Avian Shadows

Today's haiku was written by guest poet and journalist, Tom Gordon, who also supplied the photo. Tom has other poems in the new anthology, Poems for Hungry Minds.

 even when shadows
swathe its color, a bluebird
brings cheer to my world

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Photo and haiku by Tom Gordon

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Saturday Haiku: Blizzard

 

howling blizzard winds
push the snowbound traveler
to sanctuary 

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Photo by Derek Gee (The Buffalo News/AP)

"A lone pedestrian makes his way across Colonial Circle in Buffalo, New York." Retrieved at  https://www.independent.ie/world-news/freezing-monster-storm-across-us-claims-at-least-34-lives-42243762.html

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Saturday Haiku: Moonlit Journey

 

a nighttime journey
offers travelers peace of mind
when graced by moonlight

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Image: "Moonlight," woodcut
Artist: Shiro Kasamatsu (1898-1991), Japan
Found on Pinterest at onizazen.collectrium.com



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Saturday Haiku: Birch and Pine

  

 evergreen pines stand
with bare birch trees in winter
wakefulness and sleep

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Image: Forest pine and birch trees growing on frozen lake bank (stock photo)

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Saturday Haiku: Kamigamo Shrine

 

clear waters flow down
past an ancient sacred shrine –
pathway swept today

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"Kamigamo Shrine is one of the oldest shrines in Kyoto and is located in a peaceful, quiet area."
An important Shinto sanctuary on the banks of the Kamo River in north Kyoto, it was founded in 678.

Photo by beautiful_places_in_japan found on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/100378811716599/photos/a.100387675049046/557046259383183/

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Saturday Haiku: Bluebird Pause

 

a bluebird sitting
on the branch of an oak tree –
momentary pause

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Photo by Charles Kinnaird

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Saturday Haiku: Taking Flight

 

the sound of bird wings
sifting through the morning air
inspires like a song

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Photo Credit: Rich Keen / DPRA (courtesy of flickr)
A flock of birds takes off one morning at Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge.

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Saturday Haiku: Indian Summer

 

a season extends
as cold winds are delayed 
and butterflies dance

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Photo by Charles Kinnaird

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Saturday Haiku: Turning Leaves

 

leaves turn to signal
shortened days and cooler nights
as dry winds gather

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Photo by Charles Kinnaird

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Saturday Haiku: Acorns Emerging

 

acorns emerging
foretell days of abundance
when shadows lengthen

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Photo by Charles Kinnaird

Note: Some haiku come quickly, and some come after rewrites. This week's haiku came after four previous attempts (and you can see from the picture, I started thinking about this one when the acorns were green). Here are the ones that came before. You can judge whether I settled on the right one:

acorns on the branch
foretell days of abundance
as sunlight recedes
 
green branch with acorns
foretells days of abundance
when leaves are falling
 
green branch with acorns
foreshadowing abundance
in days when leaves fall
  
acorns emerging
foretell days of abundance
as sunlight recedes

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Saturday Haiku: Morning Rain

 

morning rain
telling the village
“Let’s just wait”

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Saturday Haiku: Stardust

 

planetary stuff

‘round a dying sun-like star –

unending cycle

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Photo: The Helix Nebula (NASA photo) 

From How It Works Daily:

The nearest planetary nebula to Earth is the Helix Nebula, which began expanding around 12,000 years ago. It’s roughly 700 light years from our world…When a Sun-like star is dying, it doesn’t have the mass to go supernova and so it throws off layers in huge coronal mass ejections (CMEs) until it becomes a bright shell of expanding gas known as a white dwarf. The shapes that the 1,000 or so cataloged nebulas form as the star ejects its outer shell are as varied as snowflakes – a fact that NASA is struggling to explain.

A Haiku Breakthrough?

Earlier this year I read Clark Strand's beautiful book on writing haiku, Seeds from a Birch Tree. In one chapter he talks about how he kept a haiku diary. After 14 years of this practice, he came home from his nature walk just having written his "first haiku." With that experience, he destroyed all his previous work. I was taken aback by that, but earlier this month, I had something of a similar experience.

On my blog, I have been writing a haiku every week since April 2013. Each Saturday with the “Saturday Haiku” feature, a new haiku goes up. Haiku typically stand alone with no title. When I post my haiku on my blog, because blog posts need a title, I will give the post a title. I will also have a picture to accompany the haiku because of the nature of the blogosphere and blog posts.

When my blog post, “Sparrow’s Feather” went up on October 1,  I realized that the picture did not enhance the post, perhaps distracted from it. On Twitter, I posted just the words and I was amazed at the number of retweets and comments. I then turned around and posed just the words on Facebook and got a similar reaction.

Here are some of the responses to the haiku:

I held my breath as I read this.

Exquisite.

Beautiful!

I can feel the stillness!

So lovely.

This may be my first haiku after nine years of attempts. I’m not saying I'll destroy my previous work, but I will return to this one to try to see what made it work.

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Saturday Haiku: Harvest

 sometimes the harvest
reminds us of how to live
in shared abundance

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Image: "Picking Apples: (2021)

Artist: Oleg Shupliak, Ukrainian artist, b. 1967. 

           Check out his website at https://shupliak.art/

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