Carpe Diem #1537 Decay

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new episode of Carpe Diem Haiku Kai. This month all our prompts have to do with autumn. That means that I will challenge you with classical and non-classical kigo (seasonwords) for autumn, haiku about autumn by the classical haiku poets like Basho and Chiyo-Ni and many more possibilities.

So ... the leaves are falling ... I hope you all have had a wonderful weekend and that you all are in good health and fortune. I had a nice easy going weekend while on the nightshift.
The future of our hospital is still very uncertain. As you all know the hospital where I am working suffered from bankruptcy, but we have still a small group of patients to care for. Tomorrow (Monday November 5th) our A & E (emergency care) will be closed during the night and than slowly our hospital is closing its units. We all hope that there will be an investor to restart our hospital. If that's going to happen we don't know yet. Our curator hopes to close a deal with an investor and she hopes to realise that next Wednesday. So this week will be very tensive for our hospital, our patients and all of my colleagues and of course myself.

Urban Decay

Okay back to our theme / prompt for today. Today I have chosen to challenge you with a modern kigo (seasonword) taken from Jane Reichhold's "A Dictionary Of Haiku". Autumn ... my season, because I love autumn, but autumn is a season full of decay ... leaves are falling and nature goes into hibernation. So today's theme is "decay". Here are a few haiku by Jane Reichhold taken from her "dictionary", section: autumn, subsection: moods:

waiting room
a patch of sunlight
wears out the chairs

recycling old glass
the rocky beach
jewel-covered coves

a howling wind
at the deep ache
a broken bone

© Jane Reichhold

In the above image you can see another kind of decay. An old house taken over by nature, walls are tumbling down, moss grows and wallpaper leaves loose ...

Decaying roses (photo © Eleanor Lees)

Here are a few haiku from my archive on "decay":

decomposed flowers
silent witness of a relative
red tear-stained eyes

© Chèvrefeuille (2012)

the scent of autumn
that sweet smell of decaying leaves -
after the rain - stronger

© Chèvrefeuille (2014)

raking the garden
the sweet scent of rotting leaves
arouses my senses

© Chèvrefeuille (2016)

And here a new one, freshly created:

raging storm
colors fading away
leaves dance

© Chèvrefeuille

A strong feeling of decay I think, how immodest, I can see how this raging storm pulls at the leaves and finally the leaves let go and dance away further into decay.

This episode is open for your submissions tonight at 7:00 PM (CET) and will remain open until November 11th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now ... have fun!