Saturday, July 31, 2021

Carpe Diem #1848 Harvest

 


Dear haijin, visitors and travelers,

Golden crops swaying
Sickles flash under the sun
A rewarding year

© Laila S

What a beautiful haiku. I ran into it while I was doing some research for our theme this month, Harvest. As I entered "harvest" as a search option into Google Search, and added haiku to it, there were a lot of haiku about the Harvest Moon (the full moon of September), but not that much about Harvest itself.

Harvesting crops is an activity we see at the life of farmers. It goes back to the ancient times that the harvesting took place at the end of Summer and start of Autumn to have enough to eat during Winter. Harvesting ... yeah it's a busy time for the farmers.

Oat Harvesting

In our "rich" regions, harvesting is done with machines, but in the less rich regions harvesting is done manual and will take a lot of time and hands to do the work.

harvest time
sickles flash in the sunlight -
reciting prayers

© Chèvrefeuille

Well ... I imagine this scene. How I wish to be part of such a scene, enjoying the sun while harvesting for winter.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until August 5th at 10:00 pm (cest). You can add your haiku, tanka or other Japanese poetry form to the linking widget hiding in our CDHK logo here below.

Carpe Diem Extra - July 31st 2021 - August 2021 will be our return.


 

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Again I broke my promise to publish here again. We have another Covid-19 outbreak here, that Delta Mutation, and that gives us healthcare workers a lot of work, but ... I miss creating posts for Carpe Diem Haiku Kai, so I am going to give it a try again, notwithstanding the busy times at work.

Next Sunday August will start. Here in The Netherlands we call that month  Harvest Month, so it has to do with the agriculture business here. So I choose the theme "Harvest" for August. I don't have a list of "kigo" for this month, but I will try to give every day (except in the weekends) a post with a connection to our month theme "Harvest".


I created the above logo for this "Harvest" month, August 2021. I will publish our first post for August right now.

Here is one "harvest-haiku" from my archives:

at dawn
farmers harvesting their fields -
overcoming winter

© Chèvrefeuille (2018)

Well ... I hope to see you all again here at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai and I hope that I can hold my promise this time.

Namasté,

Chèvrefeuille, your host

Sunday, July 4, 2021

Carpe Diem #1847 Renga With Jane Reichhold +++ Dancing Lights (Renga: Juunichoo)

 


Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Well ... I am getting the vibe again and I hope you all will have fun and joy again here at our wonderfull Haiku Kai. Earlier today I published our first episode for July 2021 and I hope to be here every day again, except de weekends.

Today I was reading in one of Jane Reichhold's Poetry Collections and immediately thought "It's Time Again For A Renga With Jane". So I took a dive into her wonderful dictionary of haiku and extracted a nice series of haiku from "Summer", "Celestial". I gathered six (6) beautiful haiku about clouds to challenge you all with.

Renga, or chained poem, is a nice way of collaborate poetry. The goal is to add your six(6) two lined strofes to the given haiku written by Jane through association.

I will give you six(6) haiku, you can decide which haiku you use to start with, the hokku. Remember that the goal of a renga is to create a "closed circle" of haiku, so the ageku (closing verse) has to be related to the first haiku you used.

Here are the six (6) haiku by Jane Reichhold:

beach tent billows
in the summer blue
white clouds

desert sounds
out of the sun's way
clouds moving

morning downpour
raised to new heights
afternoon clouds

dancing lights
clouds sprinkle the sun
across water

clouds
colored by open wall
a driftwood lair

curving with the land
a rainbow of clouds
moves out to sea

© Jane Reichhold (1937-2016)

By adding your two-lined strofes you create a so called "Juunichoo", a 12 verse renga.

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until July 9th at 10:00 pm (CEST). You can add your Juunichoo, your Renga with Jane, to the linking widget hidden in our logo below. Enjoy!


Carpe Diem #1846 Trying to restart again

 


Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new episode of our Haiku Kai. This time I hope really to restart our Haiku Kai by posting on weekdays.

For this episode I have chosen the title "Trying To Restart Again" and I really hope it will be that way. Restarting is something we all know or have had experiences with I think. For example: After the bankrupcy of the hospital were I was working I had to restart at a new facility of healthcare. It took some time to adjust to that new workplace, but now (2,5 years further) I have adjusted and I even could change several things in the policy of the facility.


Or ... after the death of my mom I had to adjust to a new kind of living. That took more of my time, because I am the only one left now of my family, say "an orphan" now. Ofcourse I have my own family together with my wife and children, but the family in which I grew up isn't no longer there.

Two examples of restarting your life. That's the idea behind this theme for today's episode.

a new day rises
birds praising their Creator -
the cry of a baby

© Chèvrefeuille

This episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until July 9th at 10:00 pm (CEST). You can add your submission to the linking widget hidden in our logo below.