white slap of hail
on my face and we’re not even
lovers
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This poem was written in response to Carpe Diem Utabukuro, the poem-bag #1 re-introduction “a single tulip”, another great prompt at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai, in which Chèvrefeuille asked us to choose a haiku or tanka we admire and write our own haiku inspired by it. So, here’s a favourite of mine by Basho, which I read again recently:
still alive
but frozen into one –
sea-slugs
###
To me there seems such a mysterious atmosphere in Basho’s haiku, probably due to the fact that a normal, albeit peculiar scene is examined so intensely until other possible meanings start to rise up. So, for my haiku I tried to borrow the coldness of that scene and the eerie intimacy. All of the poems in the link-up can be read here. And, to finish, here’s the Sleepy Jackson –
A nice choice Blake, I didn’t know this haiku by Basho … maybe I have read it with other words.
Enjoying this one …. well, not the slap of course, but you know what I mean …. my mind is wandering in so many directions and that’s great in haiku 🙂
Cycling into hail is a seriously stinging experience, I discovered the other day :S
And as I hid under an underpass, watching the hail bounce a foot off the path, I thought there must at least be a haiku in that scene 🙂