Look at green on white
Springs of holly on the snow
Crowning windowsills.
[Feel free to add your own, and they don’t have to tag.]
Good haiku, Lady J.
Thanks. Please add your own. Start a trend of beauty in this winter of our discontent.
I really tried “to sweat out” a haiku since I also see this as “the winter of our discontent”, but the 5-7-5 syllabic pattern and the irony that is not dependent on simile or metaphor wouldn’t allow me much more than a line “rabbit tracks in the snow”.
I’ll see what I can do with it. It’s a lovely start. Later.
Rabbit tracks in snow,
a vanishing epitaph,
black and white mystique.
I like it; but–a self-acclaimed haiku master once told me I couldn’t use a line like “a vanishing epitaph” or the word “mystique” because these are interpretations, not observations.
I wouldn’t worry about it too much, especially since I’m not a self-acclaimed haiku master. I had a vision and an idea that I wanted to impart in that format. It filters through my mind now and then, but the energy to revise it isn’t there. I did revise the first one, though.
The idea that every part of the haiku must stem from observation is interesting, though. The power is definitely in the image, I do realize that. However, I think it’s pretty clear that the second line is metaphorizing the tracks as an epitaph of life imprinted then vanishing in the snow, which carries with it a black (imprints) and white (vanishing) mystique which universalizes to all of life. These do seem like observations, though, now that I think of it.
Lady J.,
The haiku writers I know, sticklers for adherence to Eastern thinking, claim that the irony of a haiku comes from a matter-of-fact observation that evokes so much more than the statement of fact. Be that as it may, I liked your poem.