no moon
June 15, 2016 § 8 Comments
no moon
the owl’s hoot
lengthens the night
~
image courtesy Javier Fernandez Sanchez/Getty Images/Flickr RF
Changing Skin: modern haiku and other stories
Haiku, stories and unfinished business…
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Changing Skin: modern haiku and other stories 
Stunning.
Thank you. I think I’m on an owl roll 🙂
Excellent Rachael, I like the way the lines get longer also, mirroring what the haiku says.
I’ll wait and see what your next post is before I declare you ‘Owl Crazy’, at the moment it’s still just a harmless phase.
Thanks for sharing
Mark
I liked that haiku too, even though it didn’t conform to the ‘rules’. Breaking them I enjoy. Re owl fetish. Have had heron passion for a while and the owl may be pestering to take its place. I can’t live without obsessions… 🙂
There are rules? Huh, how come I never knew.
I used to follow all the wrong rules in haiku and it took me twenty years to realise it wasn’t about 17 syllables.
preparing three lines
his first fix of the morning —
a slave to haiku
But at least I can laugh at it now. For some 5-7-5 is all there is to a haiku, I did always have a season reference and it was always about nature. But now these days I see people writing stuff like this
How hard can it be
Five syllables, then seven
and then five. Haiku!!
And sometimes they can be…
cherry blossom trapped
in a syllabic cliche
waiting for a frog
But I’m not a haiku snob, honest. Your owl haiku that you reckons breaks the rules has a certain hint of Basho about it. Also it has the moon in it but only to say that there is no moon. Since moon could be the kigo then it’s quite clever and somewhat Zen.
I understand about the running theme issue as well. I wrote a hell of a lot of haiku/senryu about robins, I was obsessed without realising it.
dusk
two robins –
arguing
Heron you say? Hmmm… here’s a photo that I took—after months of trying I must add—that I think you might like.
Indeed I do like your heron. I immediately felt a haiku coming on but I suppressed it as I’ve got to go out in a minute.
There are haiku poets out there resembling autistic thought police who will tell you that your offering is very nice, but… Have you not encountered these wonderful souls?
On a sensible note, it really can’t be about 17 syllables or 5-7-5 as our language isn’t structured like Japanese. Some of my early ‘stick to the rules’ haiku were so wordy they were embarrassing! It is as you say about the surprise in the first line and all those possibilities barely hinted at in between the lines
Always good to talk 🙂
Gorgeous – love that ‘lengthens the night’.
Thank you. I think it would be hard to go back to writing stories again, they may well feel very ‘wordy’ and heavy 😦