Carpe Diem #894 First Light

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

This weekend is almost over and a new week starts within approximately 6 hours. A new week full of adventure, work, wonderful weather, beautiful prompts and so on. This week we will have a special Tokubetsudesu episode created by Sara McNulty. As you maybe remember she won this opportunity by participating in our special Christmas Kamishibai challenge. She has created a wonderful Tokubetsudesu episode to which I am looking forward and I hope to see a lot of wonderful responses by you my dear Haijin, visitors and travelers.

Okay ... back to this episode of CDHK. This month we explore classical and modern kigo and today I have a beautiful modern kigo (extracted from Jane Reichhold's "A Dictionary of Haiku", the online version). Today I ask you to write/compose haiku. tanka or another Japanese poetry form inspired on first light ... Maybe not really a modern kigo, because all Japanese classical kigo on "first" are mostly used in that special Japanese 5th season, New Year. But this modern kigo from Jane is bound to winter and that fits this month's prompt-list, all kigo from winter.

Credits: Milky Dawn

First light ... can be pointing to the departing of winter and the start of spring, but it also can point to the beauty of the first light on a cold winter morning ... Or, not especially for winter, the first light that children see as they are born ... looks more like spring, new start, new beginnings and so on, but ... it can be used also in that way.

Here are a few of the examples which Jane gives for first light:

first light
nudging frozen clouds
snow flakes

milky dawn
the world without color
takes form

spots of blue
varying the light to fit
tracks in the snow

© Jane Reichhold

Three beauties I would say, but my favorite is for sure the second haiku. It's a scene which we can see often here in The Netherlands in this time of year and it's a magical, mysterious experience to see how the milky dawn slowly disappears to show the world in all her beauty.

winter morning
the fragile light of the sun
reflects in the snow

a cold moonlit night
just the sound of fresh fallen snow -
wandering over the moors

© Chèvrefeuille

And another one, but not written in winter:

daylight brightens
the rooster crows his sun greet -
the silence deepens

© Chèvrefeuille

I hope that I could inspire you all with this post ... have fun!

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will be open  until January 13th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode, Harusamu (cool spring), later on.