Carpe Diem Tokubetsudesu #48 ferns

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Another week has gone by and it's already Wednesday again ... time for a new episode of Carpe Diem Tokubetsudesu (our former Ghost Writer feature). This week I have chosen to do a new episode of our CD Distillation feature in which the goal is to distill haiku (or tanka) from a other (longer) poem. And this week I have chosen for a poem by Raymond A. Foss titled "Translucent Ferns":

TRANSLUCENT FERNS

The melting frost
ablaze in the warming
the wetness of the morning
changing the light

The ferns turned
from green to brown
from summer to autumn
but in the morning translucent
lit from behind

As the frost bleeds away
the lobes of the fern turned
warming in the light
of the autumn morning
as I rush on by

© Raymond A. Foss

Raymond has given me permission to use his poem and he even send me a haiku he wrote after this poem, a kind of distillation as is the goal for this week's Tokubetsudesu episode:

The ferns alive, clear
translucent before dying
almost like windows…

© Raymond A Foss

It's always a pleasure and a honor to get permission from other poets to use their poem(s) and I am glad that I can use this poem to inspire you.

As you all know we are busy with exploring Jane Reichhold's "A Dictionary of Haiku" and therefore I also will give a few examples of her haiku on ferns.

summer bracken
the shape of the spots
on the resting fawn

wild rivers
the joy unfurls
in ferns

© Jane Reichhold

Credits: Ferns

fragile beauty
through leaves of ferns
I see the sun

© Chèvrefeuille

What a wonderful plant this is, so fragile, so green ... they wave in the summer breeze like fans ... giving a little bit of coolness.

torn ferns
I use their leaves like a fan
Ah! that coolness

© Chèvrefeuille

I hope you did like this episode of Tokubetsudesu and I hope it will inspire you to distill an all new haiku from the poem by Raymond A. Foss. Have fun!

This episode of Tokubetsudesu is open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and it will remain open until June 19th at noon (CET). I will (try to) publish our new episode, desert, later on.