Carpe Diem #593, "A Departed Soul" (July 2014) reprise

!! This episode I publish earlier than I normally do, because I am in the nightshift !!

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

We have to visit the last few months these days and than this celebration of our second anniversary is over. Than we can look back at a wonderful month full of reprise prompts from the start of Carpe Diem until now ...
As we are on a journey along memory lane we have arrived now at July 2014, in this month we had all CD-Specials because we had all haiku by the big five, Basho, Chiyo-Ni, Buson, Issa and Shiki. It was a tough month for me to prepare all those episode with haiku by the big five, but it was really a joy to that for you all ... my haiku-family-members of Carpe Diem Haiku Kai. Thanks to you all Carpe Diem Haiku Kai has become what it is right now ... a gathering of haiku-poets and haiku-poetesses ... a family ...

"A Departed Soul" refers to the haiku by Shiki which he wrote on his death-bed and which is seen as his death-poem or Jisei. In that episode, published on July 28th, Shiki was the one of the "big five" whom delivered the haiku for your inspiration. Here is that haiku again:

sponge gourd has bloomed
choked by phlegm
a departed soul

© Shiki

Credits: Sponge Gourd

A nicely written "death-poem" very nicely done ... I think Shiki has written the most beautiful death poem of all the "big five". Here are the deathpoems by Basho and Chiyo-Ni:

ill on a journey
my dreams start to wander
across desiccated fields

© Basho

having gazed at the moon
I depart from this life
with a blessing

© Chiyo-Ni

And ... what would be my death-poem, my Jisei? Maybe it could be this one ... it's a haiku in which the shortness of life is portraited through a comparison with dew ...

morning dew
evaporates in the early sunlight -
spirit climbs to the sky

© Chèvrefeuille

Well ... I hope you did like this episode and I hope it will inspire you to write an all new haiku ... This episode is open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and will remain open until November 1st at noon (CET). I will publish our next episode, Movement (August 2014), later on.