A Dozen Haiku

Now that we’re into December, I’m taking time to look back at 2019 in various ways. This week I’m taking a look at the haiku I’ve posted on Twitter. There have been hundreds of them, so winnowing it down to just 12 proved quite a challenge. I’m going to cheat by first listing some of the categories I won’t include in the final dozen.

The newest haiku challenge I’ve joined is #ReelKu. It invites people to post haiku based on a particular film, chosen each week by @deft_notes (Jonathan Roman). It only began on 11/17, and I’m proud to say I gave it its name! The current film we’re examining is It’s a Wonderful Life. Here is one of my contributions:

a tiny bell rings
skin tears, muscle and bone shift
white feathers unfurl

I’ve been participating in #SciFaiKuSaturday pretty much since it launched. It’s sponsored alternately by @­_Irene_Dreams_ and @HawkandYoung. They post a prompt, and we write haiku in a science fiction vein based on the prompt. Here’s one I did this year:

robot uprising
not born out of secret lairs
but algorithms

By far my largest set of haiku, though, was written for the #HaikuChallenge, hosted by @baffled. It’s daily, so I’ve written 349 of them so far this year! Looking over them, I see there are some themes that come up again and again. One is words, unsurprising since I’m a writer. Here’s one:

humanity’s first
virtual reality
tales by the fire

Many of them relate to the realities of modern life, good and bad. This one, for instance, is especially relevant now that the holiday online shopping season is in full swing:

we’ve come to expect
our dreams delivered on time
in cardboard boxes

For some reason, lots of the haiku I wrote had to do with birds, including this one:

a seagull sails past
how sad that it’s not aware
how I envy it

The dozen haiku I’ve chosen for this post, though, reflect the changing seasons as I followed them through the year. Here they are. Enjoy!

the cold winter sky
a blue so hard it makes clouds
shatter into snow

as the snowflakes fall
they perform a wild ballet
pas de millions

we turn toward the sun
green leaves, flowers, bees appear
earth’s great magic trick

on the summer blooms
bees bumble, tumble, fumble
prospecting for gold

honey on my toast
every golden drop distilled
from sun and flowers

I sit on the porch
in a sweater, sipping tea
and watch autumn fall

the year grows older
dry leaves are caught in the fence
I am not ready

The big tree out front
dancing in the autumn wind
paints the lawn yellow

on a chilly night
a lone tree takes a bite from
a Halloween moon

leaves blaze and fall
earth draws up her white blanket
and lets her scars heal

in the frozen night
trees filter moonlight through nets
of tangled branches

ice on the sidewalk
hear it crack under my feet
I step carefully

One final note, about the headline image for this post. It is a detail from a painting we purchased in Tokyo in 1984. I’m sad to say that I don’t know the name of the artist, but to me it fits well with the elegance, simplicity, and focus on nature embodied in haiku.

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Please note that all starting in a few weeks, I will be posting only on my official website: www.celiareaves.com. I hope to see you on my new site!