Carpe Diem #500, Gingko Leaves

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

What a joy! Today we have a little celebration ... today we have our 500th prompt on Carpe Diem Haiku Kai. I never had thought that CDHK would be that succesful, but as we all can see ... CDHK is still alive and kicking. As started in October 2012 I thought ''maybe this will do a year, I couldn't have dreamed that I would still be here with my daily haiku-meme. It's really a joy to share my love for with the world and I know that you all, my dear Haijin, visitor and travelers, our haiku-family, enjoys it a lot. We have a steady growing Haiku Kai and a lot of haiku-poets who are sharing here their haiku on a regular base.

THANK YOU ALL 

Today we are going on with the exploration of the modern summer kigo as created by Jane Reichhold and today our prompt is gingko leaves. Here is an example by Jane:

fanning my cheek
a gingko tree loans us
its papery leaves

© Jane Reichhold

As I was preparing this episode I ran into the word ''ginko'' (almost the same as gingko) and it brought immediately a new feature for CDHK in mind. ''Ginko" means in Japanese ''a walk taken with the purpose of writing haiku'' and Jane wrote a haiku with this ''ginko'' in it.

ginko success
finding back home
sand between my toes

© Jane Reichhold

Must be awesome to go on a ''ginko'' together with other Haijin to write haiku. I remember that I once did that with the Haiku Society of The Netherland and it was really fun. We went to the Hortus Botanicus in Leiden (a place near The Hague) and we made a ''ginko'' with eachother. I even remember a haiku which I wrote than:

spider's cobweb
hides the smiling face of Buddha -
a gust of wind

© Chèvrefeuille

Ok ... back to our prompt for today. What's the deeper meaning of Gingko Leaves I asked myself and I sought on the WWW for that deeper meaning it turned out that the Gingko Tree stands for Life Force. The Gingko is very important for e.g. Chinese Alternative medicine and that makes this tree very interesting.

It's known for its fan-shaped leaves, as we also could read in Jane's haiku above.

Credits: Gingko Biloba

Isn't it a wonderful tree? Worth to celebrate our 500th prompt here at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai ... it's thanks to all of you that CDHK has become a success.

on his death-bed
he smiles as he sees the Gingko-tree -
blooming Lotuses

© Chèvrefeuille

Well ... this was our 500th CDHK (regular) prompt. I hope you did like it ... and maybe you all think ''what a sad haiku Chèvrefeuille has shared here in this celebration-episode'' ... maybe that's true, but I think that even in death is something worth celebrating in the spiritual way of thinking ofcourse.

This episode is open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and will remain open until June 30th at noon (CET). I will post our next episode, strawberry, later on. For now ... have fun, be inspired and share your haiku with us all here at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai.