Carpe Diem #1595 hawk (taka)

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at the penultimate episode of January 2019. This month we were exploring seasonwords for winter. Seasonwords (or kigo) are words that can be used to place a time-frame into your haiku (or tanka). Seasonwords, as the name already says are words that point to a specific season. In classical Japan there were five seasons, New Year, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. That classical tradition is still in use nowadays, but as you all know New Year season is only something of Japan and few other countries in that same region.

As we talk about classical haiku than the use of a kigo (seasonword) is one of the classical rules next to the 5-7-5 syllables-structure, a cuttingword (kireji), a moment as short as the sound of a pebble thrown into water, a deeper meaning (mostly spiritual or Buddhistic) and the interchangeable first and third line. Back in our rich CDHK history we saw several other classical rules, but the ones I mentioned are the most known and common in use.

Today I have a classical kigo for you to work with. It's taken from the section Winter subsection Animals of the Shiki classical saijiki. So today you have to create haiku with "hawk (taka)".

Hawk (Taka)

What a majestic bird this is and what a wonderful spiritual meaning this Hawk has. The hawk symbolizes the ability to use intuition and higher vision in order to complete tasks or make important decisions. ... Hawks represent the messengers of the spirit world, so seeing them definitely means the universe wants you to learn powerful lessons or expand your knowledge and wisdom.

Here is an example of a haiku by Masaoka Shiki with this kigo and a few more other haiku:

toward those short trees

we saw a hawk descending

on a day in spring.

© Masaoka Shiki

by a singular stroke

of luck, I saw a solitary hawk circling

above the promontory of Irago.

© Matsuo Basho

between bare branches

high above the white world

hawks looking for prey

messenger of heaven

circling high above my head -

re-thinking my life

© Chèvrefeuille

Well ... I think Hawk can give you a lot of inspiration and I am looking forward to all your responses. By the way that brings me to the following. As you have noticed I am not commenting a lot, my excuses for that, because I am far behind with commenting and I hope, I really hope to catch up a.s.a.p.

This episode is open for your submissions tonight at 7:00 PM (CET) and will remain open until February 6th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our last episode of this month later on. For now ... have fun!