Carpe Diem #1185 mirage (miraajuu)

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Today another great classical kigo extracted from the Kiyose, mirage. This month we will have all classical kigo, seasonwords, that are part of the classical way of haiku writing. And this month I hope to create classical haiku (or tanka) myself and as you know ... that's not really my "cup of tea". Yesterday I didn't bring tanka following the classical rules, but today I hope to do that for sure.

Today our classical kigo is mirage (miraajuu), but what is a mirage? I dived into the WWW and found a nice definition of mirage on Wikipedia:

A mirage is a naturally occurring optical phenomenon in which light rays are bent to produce a displaced image of distant objects or the sky. The word comes to English via the French mirage, from the Latin mirari, meaning "to look at, to wonder at". This is the same root as for "mirror" and "to admire".

In contrast to a hallucination, a mirage is a real optical phenomenon that can be captured on camera, since light rays are actually refracted to form the false image at the observer's location. What the image appears to represent, however, is determined by the interpretive faculties of the human mind. For example, inferior images on land are very easily mistaken for the reflections from a small body of water.

Mirage along the Xin'an River, Huanshan City China (2011)

Mirages can be categorized as "inferior" (meaning lower), "superior" (meaning higher) and "Fata Morgana", one kind of superior mirage consisting of a series of unusually elaborate, vertically stacked images, which form one rapidly changing mirage.

Must be a strange sight as you see a mirage. Mirages appear mostly in spring and therefore it became a kigo for spring.

An example of a haiku with "mirage" in it. This haiku is written by Celestine Nudanu of Reading Pleasure, I think you will know her because she posted this haiku here at CDHK back in 2014.

on coconut leaf
the sizzling sun shimmers
forming a mirage

© Celestine Nudanu

Or what do you think of this one:

Appearing out of

a heat mirage comes

the winning horse

© Gotō Tatsuo (Japan)

Earlier published in Frogpond 39:1 in a review of: Bruce Ross et al, eds. A Vast Sky: An Anthology of Contemporary World Haiku. (2015)

Another example of a mirage (photo © Jeffrey Beall on Flickr)

I found a nice haiku by Yosa Buson in which you can "see" mirage as a kigo:

The shimmering heat

…soil in a wicker basket

someone dear

© Yosa Buson

And here are a few haiku from my archives (not following the classical rules by the way):

shimmering sky

behind a thin veil of heat -

seagulls cry

at the end of the road

the sky kisses the earth -

everlasting love

© Chèvrefeuille

Of course I cannot leave without creating a new one ... so here it is:

through veil of spring rain
I see the shadows of the old castle
it's not even close

© Chèvrefeuille

Hmm ... I don't know it's not a masterpiece, maybe it looks too artificial, because of the use of the classical rules. Let me know what you think!

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until April 9th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode, hazy moon, later on. For now .... have fun!