Carpe Diem #1226 swamp

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new day in our wonderful summer kigo month, July 2017. Here in The Netherlands it's raining almost all day, but temperatures are okay, around 22 degrees Celsius. So not really a summer feeling, but this sultry day is perfect for our prompt for today. A modern kigo extracted from "A Dictionary of Haiku" by Jane Reichhold.

Our prompt for today I didn't associate with summer, but than I remembered a hot summer day several years ago, I was a young adult, around 22 yrs of age. I wandered around my home town and ran into a swamp-like environment just outside of my home town. Not really a swamp, but it almost looked the same. Here in my home town we call that place "the willow storage". It's a part of the polder that looks like how earth looked in the prehistory ... and it is a marvelous piece of nature to be in.
As that young adult I was exploring who I am and who I wanted to be. I had a free mind and on that hot summer day I decided to "dive" into "the willow storage", but it was really hot and very sweaty, because of the high moistured air. Well ... as a free minder I decided to took of my clothes, put them in a bag, hide it, and walk into the willow storage completely naked. It felt great, it felt like being 100% in tune with nature. I heard the buzzing of mosquitoes and bees. I bathed in the warm waters of the willow storage and laid down on a nice spot of grass somewhere in the middle of it. It was a real nice day ... I even tried to create a haibun about this beautiful day several years later.

The Willow Storage

The willow storage is a wonderful place and as I was preparing this episode I thought back to that wonderful day.

Today our prompt is swamp and I don't hink it needs further explanation, so here is a haiku Jane wrote as an example for this modern kigo:

black cypress
draining into the swamp
strands of color

© Jane Reichhold (1937-2016)

Awesome haiku I would say. Here is another haiku this time written by myself:

hot summer day
wandering through the swamp
mosquitoes buzzing

© Chèvrefeuille

Well ... I hope I have inspired you.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until July 30th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode, waiting for autumn (Aki tikashi, Aki wo matsu), later on. For now ... be inspired and share your haiku, tanka or other Japanese poetry form with us all.