Munira
In these posts, I’ve frequently talked about the differences between classical Japanese haiku (and tanka) and the poems we’re now writing in western languages (like English). The kigo or season word is an important part of traditional Japanese haiku. Kigo are found on a list called a saijiki, and their use can be somewhat restrictive. For example, the kigo “moon” refers only to the autumn moon. If the moon appears in a haiku referring to a different season, that season has to be specified – for example, the winter moon or the summer moon. Good old Wikipedia has a pretty good description of the kigo if you want more information – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kigo.
Needless to say, we western poets, don’t always follow this practice. In fact, though many, probably even most, of our haiku are still written about nature, we have expanded into a lot of other areas – work, home, hospitals, museums – you name it. Anything is fair game.
I got the idea for this post one Saturday when I was doing a non-residential (Zoom) mindfulness retreat in my apartment. It was time for a walking meditation. It was pouring rain outside, so I started walking slowly back and forth from my bedroom to the kitchen. As I walked, I began to take note of some of the objects I’d had for many years. Some of them I hadn’t actually looked at for a long time, and I didn’t even remember where I’d gotten them.
The meditation mind (like the haiku mind) notices things, sees them in a different, deeper way so, of course, haiku started to materialize as I was walking. Later I went back and took photos of the objects I was writing about. I also started looking at earlier photos from my cabin in Quebec and matched them with haiku I’d already written.
So this post is a glimpse of what home means to me – a cup of hot tea, produce from the garden, my piano, and nature coming through my window in the form of plant shadows.
not quite forgotten—
the six points
of a crystal star