Carpe Diem #523 Basho (5), ''How Rare!''

Dear haijin, visitors and travellers,

Today our last ''role'' of haiku by the big-five starts with a beautiful haiku written by Matsuo Basho. I hope you like this post and I hope it will inspire you all to write new haiku.

 

mezurashi ya   yama wo ide ha no   natsu nasubi

how rare!
on leaving the mountain
the first eggplant

© Basho

Basho was host of a renga party at the home of Nagayama Shigeyuki, a military man of the Shonai Clan. This was the greeting verse and it was used as 'hokku' for the renga.
He had visited Mount Hagura for seven days and was glad that he could finally eat fresh vegetables. It was published in his 'Narrow Road to the Deep North', his most well known  haibun.
I love this haiku, it's not so well known verse, but it's a verse in which we can see Basho as a traveller. On the other hand this verse brought some nice memories.

The first sentence 'how rare!' was the same as my first thought when I wrote my first haiku. I think that's almost 25 years ago. I had scribbled some short verses at the school where I then learned to be a teacher. One my fellow students told me that the scribblings I had made looked very similar like haiku. I had never heard about haiku. I thought those short verses 'rare' 'strange', but from that time on I never let go of haiku. I can't remember that very first verse, but I can recall that in that first verse I used Honeysuckle as a season word. Several years later I took the French translation of Honeysuckle as my “nom de plum” or my pseudonym. I became Chèvrefeuille, haiku poet.

Since I had nice memories when reading the above verse I have written a haiku for this episode of Carpe Diem Haiku Kai with my pseudonym, Chèvrefeuille, in it:

the sweet perfume
of the Honeysuckle
makes me drowsy

© Chèvrefeuille

At that time I couldn't know that haiku would become my passion and still is. I also couldn't know at that time that my haiku would be Internationally known. I am glad to write haiku and will write them for a long time.

What a joyful haiku don't you think so too?

As you maybe have read I have started our first Carpe Diem Haiku Kai Sea Shell Game a few days ago. This first edition is open for your submissions until October 15th at noon (CET). I have understand that a few of you couldn't use the email-adress which i created for our Sea Shell Game. So if you have trouble using it ... than you can email your haiku for the Sea Shell Game to our other emailaddress:

carpediemhaikukai@gmail.com

I hope you all will participate in this all new Sea Shell Game of our CDHK-haiku family.