Carpe Diem #1772 Virginia Blue Bell

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at the last episode of our festive 7th birthday month. Our celebrations are almost over only one day left to honor the "little creatures" of Mother Nature. So let's go!

What kind of "little creature" I have chosen today for your inspiration? Well ... I have chosen a beautiful small flower the Blue Bell. Let me tell you first a little bit more about the Blue Bell and more specific the Virginia Blue Bell.

Virginia bluebell flowers which are also known as Virginia cowslip are the most elegant and good looking flowers. These are persistent flowers found in North America. These are very beautiful flowers and growing them in your garden will add natural exquisiteness and beauty to the garden. If you want to grow them in your garden but you don’t get sufficient information then read this article as it contains all the facts about Virginia bluebell flowers.

Virginia Blue Bell

What a gorgeous little flower this is, a real beautiful "little creature".

I found a nice haiku written by the Unknown Haiku Poet ... Yozakura, whom I introduced here at CDHK several years ago.

purple bellflowers
swaying in the breeze -
the sound of water

© Yozakura

And here is one from my archives, not about the Virginia Blue Bell, but about the Chinese Bellflower:

fragile beauty
purple flowers like paper
Chinese bellflower

© Chèvrefeuille

And now it is up to you my dear Haijin. This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 6th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode later on.

Carpe Diem #1771 Firefly ... Troiku-challenge

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new (somewhat delayed) episode of our wonderful Kai were we are celebrating our 7th birth day. Seven years ago I started CDHK just to give an opportunity to create Japanese poetry on a daily basis. As I started I hadn't one clou how long it would go on ... and look were we are now ... seven years later CDHK is still alive and kicking.

While we are celebrating our 7th birthday we honor the "small creatures" of Mother Nature and so today I have another "little creature" for you to work with. Today I have chosen for the "firefly", that small creature that is renown for its glowing behind.

I have found a wonderful haiku to work with. The goal this time is to create a Troiku with that haiku. More on Troiku you can find above in the menu. Troiku is a nice creative way of haiku-ing I invented back in 2012.

Firefly

I have chosen a haiku by Buson to create your Troiku from:

longing for the grass
at the bottom of the pool
those fireflies.

© Buson

A beauty I would say. It's not a well known haiku by Buson, but in this one you can almost sense the hand of Buson is moved by Basho. That's an important thing, because at first Buson was not a "fan" of Basho's way of haiku writing, but later he started to write his haiku more and more modelled according to Basho's way of haiku writing.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 4th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new Tan Renga Wednesday episode later on. For now ... have fun! I am looking forward to all of your wonderful Troiku.

Carpe Diem #1770 Tomtit

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at the first regular episode in the last week of our festive anniversary month. We are celebrating our 7th birthday with honoring the "small creatures" of Mother Nature. So let us go on and be creative to honor them.

I hope you all have had a wonderful weekend, I had a nice weekend, had to work, but had a good weekend. We are counting down to the end of October 2019 and towards our new month full of the beauty of haiku and tanka for your and my inspiration.
Today I have chosen for another beautiful small creature, the Tomtit (or Great Tit), that beautiful bird with its colorful feathers of blue and yellow.

Tomtit

What a gorgeous "small creature". Here in The Netherlands we see the Tomtit only in autumn and winter, but it is always a joy to spot it. I like its colors and the joy it gives me as I hear it sing.

silent adoration
listen, listen, Tomtit sings its song
another joyful day

© Chèvrefeuille

Isn't it an awesome "small creature"?

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until November 3rd at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now ... have fun!

Carpe Diem #1769 free choice of prompt, and make a Soliloquy No Renga with it

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

I am a bit late with publishing this episode, just because of lack of time and lack of inspiration. So today I have chosen for a so called "free choice" episode with a twist. You may choose your own "little creatures" prompt today and the goal is to create a "solo-renga" or "soliloquy no renga" with it. As you (maybe) know the "solo-renga" has at least six (6) stanza. You start with the "hokku" (starting verse) and end with the "ageku" (closing verse).

We are celebrating our 7th birthday with a whole month in honor of the small creatures of Mother Nature ... let us celebrate the beauty of the small things of Creation.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until October 31st at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new weekend meditation later on. For now .... have fun!

Carpe Diem #1768 Crows

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new episode of our wonderful Carpe Diem Haiku Kai were we are celebrating our 7th birthday. This month we are honoring the little creatures living on our wonderful planet. A planet in pain ... a planet that weeps because we are misusing her ...

Our wonderful planet needs us and we need her. We have to take care of her, she is our living space, the only living space there is, as far as we know. So that's one of the reasons that I choose the "litte creatures" theme for our festive 7th birthday.

kare eda ni karasu no tomari keri aki no kure 

on a withered branch
a crow is perched
autumn evening

© Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)

Bashō (1644–1694) wrote this haiku in the year 1680, and it is often considered to be a
marker of the beginning of Bashō’s mature style.
It should be mentioned that “Kare-eda-ni…” was not the first text to explore the topic of a crow sitting on a withered branch. First, there exists a set phrase in Chinese meaning “a chilly-looking crow on a bare tree”  which is assumed to have been familiar also to Bashō. Secondly, Bashō had written a very similar haiku several years before this one. Both texts are accompanied by paintings, all three of which present a treatment of the topic of a withered tree and a crow (or crows, since on the painting that is assumed to be the earliest, there are 27 crows depicted altogether). Thus, Bashō’s haiku has been often seen as an adaptation of an ancient Chinese phrase or a painting title. A close connection has also been found between this particular haiku and a renga verse cited in a 16th centurycollection, Hakuhatsushu:

yūgarasu no kareki ni koe wa shite 

evening crow — 
in a bare tree on the mountain peak mine 
a voice 

© Matsuo Basho

Crow on a cherry blossom branch

The above haiku is one of Basho's renown masterpieces and we have seen this haiku often here at our Kai. And this haiku (again) you can use as a source of inspiration for this episode, because "crows" are our theme for today.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until October 30th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now ... have fun!

Carpe Diem #1767 Daisies ...

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Our birthday month is running towards its end, 10 days left before a new month starts, and I don't know how you all are experiencing this month, but I like it. I think we are celebrating in a wonderful way. Thank you all for participating in our festive October month.

Today I have chosen the theme "daisies", we have had that theme earlier here, but ... well I hadn't one clou what to choose for theme today, so I thought "let me do a theme we have had here earlier.

around the mansion
daisies standing strong together
after the storm

miracles happen
in the tiniest things
daisies blooming

© Chèvrefeuille

Daisies

What's the meaning of Daisies: 

Daisies are flowers that mean different things to different people.  It can mean cheerfulness particularly for the yellow colored blossoms and it can mean youthful beauty and gentleness.  Some people look at the daisy to be a symbol of good luck.  However, the most popular meanings attached to the daisy are - loyal love, innocence and purity.  It’s also a taken to convey the message – “I’ll never tell”.Apart from the Celtic legend that daisies were the spirits of children, the symbol of innocence also comes from the story about a dryad who oversaw meadows, forests and pastures.  One of the nymphs, Belides danced around with her nymph sister when the god of the orchards, Vertumnus saw her.  To make sure that she escapes his attentions, she turned herself into a daisy thus preserving her innocence.In terms of loyal love, daisies are used by women particularly in the Victorian age to see which suitor loves them the most.  By picking on the flower’s petals, a woman would know who loves her and who does not.

And to conclude this episode:

working hands
daisies bound together for his love -
she ... the full moon

© Chèvrefeuille

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until October 28th at noon (CET) (Summertime is over than). I will try to publish our new Tan Renga Wednesday episode later on. For now ... have fun!

Carpe Diem #1766 mouse

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

I hope you all have had a wonderful weekend full of inspiration. My weekend was very busy, because I had to work the evening-shift in the nursing home were I am working since the start of this year. Next to that I had our eldest son and his two kids visiting the whole weekend, so not only busy at work, but also at home.

This month we are celebrating our 7th birthday and we do that through a wonderful month in appreciation for the smaller creatures of nature. Today I have chosen "mouse" to work with.

Today we are creating haiku, tanka or other Japanese poetry form themed "mouse". I ran through my library of haiku and found several nice haiku by haiku-poets. Here is one by my master, Matsuo Basho:

suzume ko to koe naki kawasu nezumi no su 

Mice in their nest
squeak in response
to the young sparrows.

© Matsuo Basho (Tr. R.H.Blyth)

Here is another "mouse"-haiku this time created by a modern haiku poet:

A mouse stirs
in the kitchen cupboard;
winter solitude

© Amann, (Cicada Voices (1983))

Mouse

And a Tanka written by myself back in 2017:

through the mist
I hear the cry of an eagle
seeking for prey
aware of his surroundings
he catches a little mouse

© Chèvrefeuille

Create your "mouse"-haiku (tanka or other Japanese poetry form) in honor of this beautiful small creature.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until October 27th at noon (CEST). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now ... have fun!

Carpe Diem #1765 Squirrel ...

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new episode of our wonderful festive Carpe Diem anniversary month October 2019. This month we are celebrating our 7th birthday with a tribute to the small creatures and today I have another sweet creature ... the squirrel.

I ran through my archives and surfed around on the WWW, but I couldn't find any haiku about Squirrels, ofcourse I could not search the whole WWW, so maybe there are haiku or tanka about Squirrels and if not ... well than we can fill that gap, wouldn't that be awesome?

autumn day
squirrels plunder the oaks -
winter stock

© Chèvrefeuille

Squirrel

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until October 24th at noon (CEST). I will try to publish our new weekend meditation later on. For now ... have fun!

Carpe Diem #1764 Ants ...

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

We are halfway our celebration month for our 7th birthday and I think it's a wonderful month already and I hope the 2nd half will be as good too. This month we are not only celebrating our 7th birthday, but also the beauty of the small creatures on our Earth. We create poetry in honor and tribute of those small creatures ...

I don't have enough time for a big episode, so today I will give you only the theme. The theme (prompt) for today's episode is "ants", those hard working small creatures.

yudachi ni hashirikudaru ya take no ari

an evening shower:
the ants are running down
the bamboos

© Joso

A beautiful haiku I would say ... a nice tribute to the ants.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until October 23rd at noon (CEST). I will try to publish our new episode later on.

Carpe Diem #1763 Little Creatures ... free styling

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

First I have to apologize for being late, a little time problem (smiles). Therefore I have chosen the easy way this time. As you all know we are celebrating our 7th birthday with a month full of prompts on "little creatures" to honor them as being part of Creation.

Today you may choose your own "little creature" to work with. Tell us why you have chosen your specific "little creature" and than create haiku, tanka or other Japanese poetry form, with it.

Enjoy this task, it's your choice and you can go "free-styling".

Little Creatures Of Nature (photo © Moon Robo; Instagram)

Enjoy your day.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until October 21st at noon (CEST). I will try to post our first "new" episode of our weekly Wednesday Tan Renga Challenge later on. For now ... have fun!

Carpe Diem #1762 Mosquitoes ...

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

I hope you all have had a wonderful weekend full of inspiration ... in a relaxed mode. I had a wonderful weekend, the last of my vacation. Monday October 14th I have to work again, I am glad, because four weeks vacation is awesome, but caring for my mother took a lot of my free time, but well ... I love my mom and she and I are the only living two of our family (my brother and my dad have passed away) so we have to be there for eachother.

We are celebrating our 7th birthday this month through honoring the small creaters of nature. Today I have chosen for those small creatures that can be such a pain in the ass ... mosquitos, but there are several wonderful haiku about them. So let me give you a few examples:

summer melting
mosquitoes' sound
in a harmonica

© Jane Reichhold

in and out of raindrops
falling from the eaves they swarm...
mosquitoes

© Issa

The Mosquito Hums

A mosquito buzzes
Every time flowers
of honeysuckle fall

© Buson

Searching storehouse eaves, 
rapt in plum blossom smells, 
the mosquito hums 

© Basho

Four beautiful haiku on mosquitoes. The beauty of these haiku makes the mosquito no longer a pain in the ass.

I was triggered by the haiku by Buson, so here is my attempt to create a haiku themed "mosquitoes":

honeysuckle flowers fall
one by one, awakening mosquitoes,
covering the Earth

© Chèvrefeuille

This episode is open for your submissions tonight at 7:00 PM (CEST) and will remain open until October 20th at noon (CEST). Have fun!

Carpe Diem #1761 Sparrows (Renga With ...)

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

What a wonderful month this is ... our 7th anniversary ... I like it. I am so glad to see that you all are celebrating with me that CDHK exist seven years ... I never could have dreamed that CDHK would be alive and kicking after 7 years ... but here we are ... celebrating our 7th birthday. We have seen participants from all over the world. The most participants from the start are still here, but we also seen participants leave to never come back, but those who left and returned ... thank you.

Thank you all for your rich poems, your active participation and the love you share with us in that small Japanese poem ... haiku. This month we are celebrating this beautiful small poem with a tribute to all small creatures on Earth and today I love to challenge you with another small, sometimes a real pain in the ass, bird ... the sparrow.

Sparrows ... those small little (pricks), but there are a lot of haiku written about them. One haiku master especially created a lot of haiku about the sparrows ... and I think you all know him, Kobayashi Issa. Issa is one of the "big five" haiku masters next to Basho, Buson, Chiyo-Ni and Shiki. He had a very tough life, he lost several of his kids to death and his wife too. He was a Buddhist-Shinto believer and honored nature in a great way. Issa honored even those mosqitos and other smal creatures like the sparrows.

For this episode I love to challenge you to create a Renga, or better said: a Junicho. The Junicho is a renga of 12 stanza, this is the renga format we always use in the Renga With specials ... so I will give you six (6) haiku written by Issa to work with. Your task is to add your two-lined stanza (approx. 7-7 syllables) and create a Junicho with him. (By the way, the name Junicho came in use in the 20th century, so it's a young form of renga).

Kobayashi Issa

I will give you the six haiku by Issa. You can create your own "line-up" and the first stanza (hokku) and the last stanza (ageku) have to be connected with each other, this is "to close the chain".

spring peace--
after rain, a gang war
garden sparrows

don't let the plum blossom guard
cut your tongues...
Sparrows! *

(* note: Issa alludes to an old Japanese fairy tale in which a mean old woman cut a sparrow's tongue with scissors because the sparrow pecked at her starch. Here, Issa warns the chirping sparrows that their tongues might be in similar jeopardy, hinting that the guard is a mean old grouch.)

are the sparrows too
having a private party?
plum blossoms

while I watch
he's off to make a living alone...
baby sparrow

Sparrows on Bamboo (woodblock print by Ohara Koson)

living in harmony--
the sparrow has
both parents!

on the tip of the
newly sprouted bamboo...
a baby sparrow

© Kobayashi Issa (Tr. David G. Lanoue)

Six beautiful haiku crafted by Issa for your enjoyment and inspiration. Create your renga with Issa today and share it as a tribute to the sparrows and to celebrate our 7th birthday.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until October 17th at noon (CEST). Have fun!

Carpe Diem #1760 Butterfly (a Tan Renga challenge)

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new episode of our wonderful Kai. As you all know I didn't publish an episode on Wednesdays, but next week I will publish again on Wednesday, but not a regular episode, but a special one ... From next week on I will challenge you every Wednesday with a Tan Renga, as we do today.

Today I love to challenge you to create a Tan Renga with a given haiku. As you all know the goal of a so called "Tan Renga Challenge" is to add your 2nd stanza of two lines (approximately 7-7 syllables) to complete or continue the given haiku through association on the scenes and images in the haiku.

Here is the haiku to work with:

on the Honeysuckle
the fragile wings of a butterfly
a fluttering sound

© Chèvrefeuille (October 2012)

Butterfly On Honeysuckle (image found on Pinterest)

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until October 16th at noon (CEST). I will try to publish our new episode later on. For now ... have fun!

Carpe Diem #1759 Grasshopper (a haiku by Issa)

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

We are celebrating our 7th birthday and I am happy that we can celebrate it ... As I started with CDHK back in 2012 I wasn't aware of what I started ... but I love it. I am so glad to be your host and I am happy that I can inspire you through all the wonderful prompts we have seen here and will see in the future.

Today another wonderful prompt, another wonderful but sometimes dangerous small creature ... the Grasshopper.

Here is a haiku written by Issa inspired on this small creature:

giddy grasshopper
take care...do not leap and crush
these pearls of dewdrop

© Issa

When the grasshopper spirit animal comes leaping into your life, it signifies your need to make a tremendous leap of faith.
Just like the cricket symbolism, the grasshopper symbolism wants you to know that if you aim high and go where others are scared to go, you will accomplish amazing feats and achieve incredible results!

Grasshopper

The grasshopper spirit animal chooses those who want to move ahead in life with their innovative thinking and progressive approach.
When you are inspired by the grasshopper totem, jump forward and get past whatever is trying to keep you or hold you back.

What a tragic thing:
'Neath a mighty warrior's helm
Grasshoppers chirruping! 

© Basho (Tr. Dorothy Britton)

(note: In the most translations of this haiku by Basho, the Grasshopper is mentioned  Cricket)

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until October 14th at noon (CEST). As you all know during my vacation, this is my last week, I don't publish a new episode on Wednesday.

Carpe Diem #1221 Cockroach (Gokiburi)

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new episode of Carpe Diem's Summertime month full of kigo (seasonword) for summer. The kigo I use this month are classical and non-classical and the non-classical are extracted from Jane Reichhold's "A Dictionary of Haiku". The classical ones are extracted from the Shiki Salon Saijiki.

Today's prompt is a little bit strange, but this insect belongs to summer ... today's classical summer kigo is Cockroach (Gokiburi). I remember a holiday my wife and I had several years ago on the Canary Islands ... cockroaches crawling through the cabin we had hired. Cockroaches ... are there haiku written about these creatures?

While searching for haiku about cockroaches I ran into a "cockroach-haiku" written by a girl of 5 years, she created it for a school project about haiku:

Cockroaches crawling,
Looking for pieces of food,
People screaming loud.

© Viriginia P. (5 years old; Bucklands Beach Primary School)

Cockroach (Gokiburi)

Here is another haiku about cockroaches, this one is created by Dennis Siluk:

The night is so long and hot,
Here the cockroach rests
By my bedroom door!...

© Dennis Siluk

And here is one written by R.K.Singh:

Sipping coffee
at a wayside stall
cockroaches too

© R.K.Singh

I searched for other haiku, but the all the haiku about cockroaches I ran into were written by modern poets. I couldn't find any haiku about cockroaches, but ... maybe you can find some!

shadow on the wall
moves closer and closer
a cockroach

early morning
with bare feet crushing a cockroach
hot summer day

© Chèvrefeuille

Well ... this episode wasn't easy to create, not so much through lack of words, but mostly through the low examples for cockroach haiku.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until July 22nd at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode, beach, later on. I hope to be on time, because I am on the nightshift.

Carpe Diem "Little Creatures" #5, Ants

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

"Time flies when you have fun" they say and I think that's true. I have vacation, so no rush to work or something. Time is on my side and that's a nice thing to know.
As I mentioned in the last "preview" I am busy creating a few new features and a new website. In the next weeks I will present and introduce the Carpe Diem Ginko in which we will take a walk through my neighborhood with pencil and paper in hand. So ... you will learn a little bit more about me and the place I am living.

In this episode of "Little Creatures" the leading role is for the ants those wonderful little creatures that work so hard, they are always busy (as I am, maybe I am an ant?) We will look at them in admiration and awe. Of course there will be a few examples of haiku written by classic haiku poets about ants e.g. Buson, but that's later in this episode. First I will look at a wonderful saying about ants in the Holy Scripture:

[...] "Go to the ants, you sluggard, see their ways and become wise". (Proverbs 6: 6) [...]

or what to say about this verse (also from Proverbs):

[...] "(Ants) which having no chief, officer or ruler, prepares her food in the summer and gathers her provision in the harvest." (Proverbs: 30: 29) [...]

That first verse from Proverbs is one of the most known and in my country it has become a "saying". The haiku examples I will share here are not that well known, maybe the one by Buson, but I don't know that for sure.

Credits: Leaf Cutter Ants (photo © Gail Shumway/Getty Images)

yudachi ni hashirikudaru ya take no ari

an evening shower:
the ants are running down
the bamboos

© Joso

The touch of Zen is in the unexpressed and therefore all the more poignant feeling of the unity of our life with that of nature. This is felt in the ants' agitated running back down the trunks of the bamboos, the same ants that seem to have been climbing up the bamboos all day.

ari nagasu hodo no oame to nari ni kiri

it became a rain
heavy enough
to wash the ants away

© Kuson

This is not so much an expression of pity for the ants as a description of the summer rain. We may say the same even of the following, by Gyodai:

yakue naki ari no sumika ya satsukiame

nowhere to go;
the dwellings of ants
in the summer rain

© Gyodai

To endorse this row of classical haiku I have a haiku by Buson:

haari tobu ya fuji no susano no kore yori

winged ants fly
from a small house
at the foot of Mount Fuji

© Buson

This may be reminiscent of the beginning of Soshi. Winged ants, a small house, Mount Fuji, here is a gradation of size, a relativity which shows the meaningless of mere quantity. There is a mystery in this verse which is like that of Alice in Wonderland, but not so obvious. (Source: R.H. Blyth, Haiku Vol. 3)

Credits: Bull Ant (© J.Green, Photographer)

And now ... the goal of this "Little Creatures" episode: You don't have to use the classical rules. You have to write an all new haiku about ants or another little creature, but ... you have to write a six (6) linked renga about it, so your response starts with one of the given haiku (you may choose which one you will use as the starting verse (hokku) of your six (6) linked renga), than a two line stanza, a three line stanza, a two line stanza, a three line stanza and the last stanza (ageku) has to be a two line stanza and must have a link or association on the first three line stanza (hokku).

(For example) I will start my six (6) linked renga with the haiku by Joso:

an evening shower:
the ants are running down
the bamboos

(In renga this starting verse is called "hokku")

as the day ends in the west
the last sunbeams disappear

the cool summer night -
I have restless dreams next to you
the one I love

nightmares torturing me
attacked by mosquitos

the first sunbeams
cherishing my naked body
blankets have fallen

awakened by rustling bamboo
a new day rises for the ants

(In renga this closing verse is called ägeku")

© Chèvrefeuille

Credits: Ants on Bamboo

And now it's up to my dear friends and family-members ... not an easy task I think, but for sure it will be fun. So "become" the ant (or any other little creature) and look around you ... nature will inspire you ...

This episode of Little Creatures will be open for your submissions Thursday 18th at noon (CET) and will remain open until next Thursday September 25th at noon (CET). Well .... have fun!
!! Soon to come an all new feature related to renga !!

Carpe Diem's "Little Creatures" #4

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

What a wonderful time we are living in ... on the edge between summer and autumn ... leaves start to change from green to all kinds of yellow and red ... the weather changes. Here we have a nice 'Indian Summer' period ... not to warm, not to cold, not to dry or to wet. Clear blue skies are changing every moment of the day ... white, grey, dark grey and black clouds appear and disappear ... it's really great this time of year.
What has this to do with "Little Creatures" ? We are going to explore the little creatures on the edge of summer and autumn. We have flies, mosquitos, butterflies and dragonflies, but are there also little flowers, trees and bushes specific for this time of year? Yes there are, daisies, sheperds purse, camille and more.
All those little creatures, bugs and bushes can be a source for your inspiration ... Today I have a few wonderful haiku about little creatures written by several haiku-poets, both classic and modern ... I hope these haiku will inspire you to write haiku about those little wonders of Mother Nature.

Here are a few "little creatures" haiku by several poets:

tori naite bimbô-gusa(*) mo saki ni keri

birds singing--
wild daisies too
are blooming

© Kobayashi Issa

(*) Gaby Greve, a wellknown Japan scholar translates bimbô-gusa to "weed of the poor" and advised the translator to use "Wild Daisies"

Credits: Daisies

 

Another set of haiku by Issa, this time on 'dragonfly':

asa-zamu mo haya gatten no tombo kana

he, too, quickly learns
how cold the morning is...
dragonfly

tombô no hako shite iru ya kiku no hana

the dragonfly
takes a crap...
chrysanthemum

Credits: Blue Dragonfly

Aren't they wonderful? Let me give you a few other examples of "little creatures" caught in haiku. What do you think of this one composed by Shiki:

rai harete ichiju no yûhi semi no koe

after the thunder-shower
one tree in evening sunlight
a cicada's cry

© Shiki

Or what do you think of this one by O. Mabson Southard, which we have had last year (September) as a featured haiku poet at CDHK. This one is about another little creature, the mouse.

At the window, sleet…
Here in the darkening hut—
sudden squeaks of mice

© O. Mabson Southard

Credits: Mice

Or this one, also by Southard:

fiery ball
between the trees
crickets sing their songs

© O. Mabson Southard

And than this one written by myself, last year in response on a haiku by O. Mabson Southard:

frogs jump in -
the sound of rain far away
thunder and lightning© Chèvrefeuille

And for closure ... what do you think of this wonderful haiku by Jane Reichhold?

Twilight
neither night nor day
frogs and bats

© Jane Reichhold

Isn't it wonderful to read all those haiku in which the little creatures are celebrated? It's awesome to look close to your surroundings and become inspired by it ...

Well ... this was our fourth "Little Creatures" episode and it was just fun to create it. I hope it will inspire you to write your own "Little Creatures" haiku ... this time ... please follow the classical rules of haiku for your submissions.

This episode is open for your submissions at noon (CET) and will remain open until next Thursday September 18th at noon.