Carpe Diem Special #159 Lolly's 1st "spring tidings"

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new month of Carpe Diem Haiku Kai full of wonderful prompts and adventure. This month we are exploring "in the footsteps of the pharaohs" The Nile and are going deep into Africa to find its source.

As you all know the winner of our CDHK kukai is granted with a prize, next to an e-book, the winner becomes the featured haiku poet/ess of CDHK. This month our CD Specials will all be haiku or tanka composed by Laura Williams a.k.a. Lolly of Lovely Things. You can find her e-book "Lovely Things" at the right side of our Haiku Kai. Its free for download. I think Lolly and I have done a great job with this e-book. As you can see I have chosen the cover of her e-book as the logo for the CD Specials this month.

Lolly won our second kukai "summertime"with the following haiku:

gathering seashells
the sound of summer jingles
inside my pockets

© Lolly

This is a wonderful haiku in which she has touched the deepest feeling of "summertime" I think and I really think she had to be the winner.
Lolly is a very talented haiku poetess and I am glad that she is part of Carpe Diem Haiku Kai. She writes wonderful haiku and tanka. I even think that her tanka are more beautiful than her haiku. She has truly mastered this wonderful Japanese poetry form. 

Credits: Bee on a Sunflower

For this first CD Special by Lolly I have chosen a tanka to inspire you.

spring tidings ...
a message of the flowers
to decipher
a secret little alphabet
that begins with a bee

© Lolly

This tanka is awesome. In this tanka Lolly has touched the deepest intention of bees, finding their way to those tasteful places of honey ... without thinking they find their way and make us happy, because as they are gathering honey they are the start of our fruits ...
Do they have their own language? Can we find that tiny little alphabet?

The goal of these CD Specials is to write a haiku or tanka in the same sense, mood and spirit as the one given. I have chosen an oldie, a haiga which I made several years ago and which I love to share here another time.

photo-haiga © Chèvrefeuille

Well .... this was our first episode of our new CDHK month. I hope you did like this episode in which we got inspired by a tanka of our featured haiku poetess Lolly.

This episode will be open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and it will remain open until August 4th at noon (CET). I will (try to) publish our new episode, a reprise of The Lighthouse of Alexandria, to start our journey over The Nile in our papyrus-boat, later on. For now have fun!