Carpe Diem #1582 Black Birds (modern kigo)

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at our wonderful Haiku Kai were we are exploring the beauty of all kinds of Japanese poetry especially haiku and tanka. This month we are exploring kigo, those nice words that point towards the season in which the haiku scene was seen. This month I have chosen kigo (classical and modern) for winter and today I have a wonderful modern kigo taken from Jane Reichhold's "A Dictionary of Haiku", a modern Saijiki.

Winter is associated with snow, virginity, cold weather and so on. The "white-ness" in contrast with for example the blackness of several kinds of birds. Maybe you remember this beauty by Basho:

a crow
has settled on a bare branch —
autumn evening

© Basho

Crow

Of course this isn't a real winter haiku, but it can be easily set into winter in my opinion. I have  given it a try:

winter moonlight
on a bare branch covered with snow
a crow's shadow

© Chèvrefeuille

Today our modern kigo is Black Birds, extracted from Jane Reichhold's "A Dictionary of Haiku" and here are a few haiku written by Jane taken from her above mentioned Saijiki:

flying from the branch
sun in a bird's wing
a shower of snow

blackbirds leaving
on bare winter wands
pussy willows

winter birds
kicking down fireworks
from snowy twigs

© Jane Reichhold (1937-2016)

Black Birds

Well ... I hope I have inspired you all to create haiku with this modern kigo. Maybe you can try to create a tanka or maybe choose the classical way of haiku writing and use the classical rules. It's all up to you.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until January 17th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new weekend meditation later on. Have fun!