Today's Little creatures talks about two lovely haiku by Buson:
ka no koe su nindo no hana chiru tabi ni
the voices of mosquitoes,
whenever the flower of the honeysuckle
falls
© Buson
ka no koe su nindo no hana chiru goto niMy life has taken me to many different countries and one of these was Djibouti, which I think is just about the hottest most inhospitable country in the world. We lived for a year without air conditioning and then we found a small house that had airconditioning at least in the communicating bed-rooms. The air condtioner was old and dripped terribly onto the wood-work around the bottom of the walls. The first evening when we turned on the AC to go to bed though, we didn't know this yet. It was about an hour later that the room filled-up with winged termites.
the honeysuckle;
with every petal that falls,
the voice of the gnats
© Buson
dripping water
from an old airconditioner
- fluttering termites
from an old airconditioner
- fluttering termites
I lived in the Phillipines for three years as a child. The pathway around my house was lined with flowers, among which were many beautiful white honeysuckles. A neighbor taught me to suck the nectar from the bottom of the flowers ... delightful!
a flowered path
swaying white honesuckles
child and bee's delight
swaying white honesuckles
child and bee's delight
© G.s.k. '14
Loved both of them.. Particularly because I can relate to both of them. We call those insects midges.They bite even your eyelids.
ReplyDeleteDesert heat without air con is torture. I remember not having it in the car and we had to wrap ourselves in wet towels and put wet towels on the windows keeping ourselves cool with water spray bottles as we were driving along...Dear God...sometimes I can hardly believe I am still in one piece and functioning reasonably well:)
Desert heat is a torture ... in Djibout it had the disadvantage of not even being dry heat as the humidy was very high being jutted out into the Indian Ocean. The first year took its toll .. I acquired a calcium deficiency from sweating so much that I had to do a course of injections that lasted two weeks ... not a happy place to remember.
DeleteThis is great Georgia --- what an interesting image, the water scattering the termites --- :)
ReplyDeleteBelieve me, it wasn't so interesting that evening ;-)
DeleteWhat a nice set of haiku Georgia. You have lived in a lot of countries ...
ReplyDeleteYes, I've lived in quite a few countries, most of them in Africa. Glad you enjoyed the haiku set! :-)
Delete