Writing with Buson - "Fruitless Blossoms" Haiku - July 10, 2014

Today's post is dedicated to Buson - this is the second week in Carpe Diem Haiku Kai's month dedicated to the big five.  Here's today's poetic choice for Buson:

adabana wa ame ni utarete uri batake

fruitless blossoms
are beaten by the rain
in the melon fields

© Buson (Tr. by Thomas McAuley)

Reading this haiku and looking out my window in this rainy cold summer, makes me reflect on the problems our farmers in our valley are having this year with the fruit crops.  The cherry harvest has been nearly a disaster!  But fruitless blossoms also makes me thing about the poppies in the fields ... this is a beautiful haiku to get into the feel of country life!

flowering grape vines
tattered by the summer storms
poppies flourish

© G.s.k. '14

Chiyo-Ni - "In an unknown sky" - July 8, 2014

In Carpe Diem Haiku Kai we read:

Kaga no Chiyo, considered one of the foremost women haiku poets, began writing at the age of seven. She studied under two haiku masters who had themselves apprenticed with the great poet, Basho.... In 1755, Chiyo became a Buddhist nun -- not, she said, in order to renounce the world, but as a way 'to teach her heart to be like the clear water which flows night and day'. From that moment on she is known as Chiyo-Ni (Ni means nun).

Today's choice for the big 5 at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai is Chiyo-Ni (1703-1775) and as we read above the Ni means nun ... from the Wikipedia we read that she was the daughter of a pcture framer and began writing haiku at the age of seven and by the age of 17 she was renowned throughout Japan.  The haiku chosen is a fairly tipical subject for a Buddhist haiku ...

Chiyo- Ni

meigetsu ya ittemo ittemo yoso no sora

autumn's bright moon,
however far I walked, still afar off
in an unknown sky

© Chiyo-Ni

I think of walking under the bright moon in an infinite sky, unknown and unknowable as I read this poem ... the wonder and awe before the majesty of life.

crytalline sky
walking awestruck, under the stars
infinite beauty

© G.s.k. '14