Sunday, March 10, 2013

Carpe Diem #142, Uraraka (serene)



Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

'Till now we had 'early Spring kigo', so now we are entering 'mid-Spring'. For the next, say, ten days we are sharing haiku on classical Mid-Spring Japanese kigo. Yesterday we started mid-Spring with Kiji (pheasant) and now we have Uraraka (serene). In this kigo serene can easily been seen as tranquility, calmness and peacefulness. There are several haiku poets who have written haiku with tranquility, calmness and peacefulness in it. For example this one by Taigi:

calm days
the swift years
forgotten


Or this one by Issa (maybe you remember it from our second Carpe Diem month in which Issa was our haiku master):

a calm sunny day
the monk of a mountain temple
peeps through a part of the fence


Or what do you say of this one on tranquility by Shiki:

tranquility
the first torii (*) in the middle
of the barley field


(*) A Torii is the sacred archway of a Shinto shrine. Every Shinto shrine had three of these Torii, which weren't direct in front of the shrine, but quite in a distant. This Torii in Shiki's haiku was the first and stood in the middle of a barley field. It's a wonderful imagery of the tranquility of Spring.

Credits: Tranquility

What a serene Japanese Garden. This old pond feature in this garden is called a 'tranquility pond'. I thought this picture is wonderful to inspire you, dear friends.

Japanese garden
streaming water of life -
tranquility


serene Spring
cherry blossoms trembling
in the breeze


I hope you enjoyed this episode and that you all are inspired to write new haiku on this prompt for today.
This prompt will stay on 'till March 12th 11.59 AM (CET) and I will post our new episode of Carpe Diem later on today around 10.00 PM (CET). That will be our second Carpe Diem Special by Onitsura.

Our inspirational haiku by Onitsura is the following:

mizu irete hachi ni uketaru tsubaki kana

putting in the water
the vase received
the camellia 






7 comments:

  1. Where I am we have another month to wait for trembling cherry blossoms but your poem gives me hope!

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  2. I let the poem lead and was thrilled when I.founsaid photo which fitted.

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  3. I agree a garden is always very calm, and your haiku are a perfect representation of that. I once visited one of the famous gardens of Suzhou, and that was truly a serene experience. Your haiku does describe this so well.

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  4. Kritjaan, I love your Japanese garden. I would love so much to visit one one day, but would probably never want to leave...Such pretty haiku. These are such a peaceful end to a hectic week end.

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  5. The example haiku are so lovely and I adore the image of the Japanese garden. What you wrote is pretty much what I would have written. I call my garden a Zen garden which brings me great tranquility. Will see what I can do differently.

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  6. Thank you for always posting! Your haiku are inspiring.

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  7. your examples are wonderful as always

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