Haiku for National Haiku Writing Month – Febuary 2025 Second Half

 

National Haiku Writing Month has been founded by the well known haiku poet Michael Dylan Welch. The goal is to write at least one haiku a day. National Haiku Writing Month is in its 14th year. [1] I enjoy writing to the prompts on Facebook. Here are some interesting links: [2]. Our daily writing prompter this month has been Michael Dylan Welch[3]. The NaHaiWriMo founder has been prompting for us every year during February since 2011. Thank you very much, Michael!

滄江好煙月，
門系釣魚船。
旅宿。
杜牧。
The moon hangs in umbilical clouds over the blue-black river,
And a fishing boat has docked at the entrance.
Overnight Stay in a Tavern
Du Mu [4]

wishing
to be stranded in the himalayas
lost horizon
~ Himalayas

the climber
hanging at the cliff
oh, a cliffhanger ...
~ Climber

no road signs
the piste stretches on the plateau
luminous path
~ Plateau [5]

in the crevasse
clinging to a lifeline
between frozen corpses
~ Crevasse [6]

on the scree slope
every step an avalanche
but i'll catch you
~ Scree

gravel slope
walking against gravity
step by step by ...
~ Slope

on the hilltop
we plan our hike
together
~ Hilltop

Bee Jay: I luv the atmosphere and the togetherness in this one. Do you need
the first two words? Without them, the cut seems clearer -

hilltop
we plan our hike
together

That's a good idea as this variant is more stringent and I like this. The original features more we've made it to the top and now we plan how our future together will be.

i dream of
a walk in the woods
with nick nolte
~ Appalachians [7]

the cairn
on top of beinn na caillich
adding stones
~ Cairn [8]

storm on denali
surviving in a snow drift
but not cancer
~ Denali

up the seracs
of kanchenjunga
down a samkirtan
~ Serac [9]

keep to snowshoeing
or cross country skiing
enjoy the après-ski
~ Skiing

seamount's peak
below the blue waves
too deep to fathom
~ Seamount [10]

seamount's peak
too deep below the blue waves
to fathom
~ Seamount

Links and Annotations:
[1] National Haiku Writing Month https://www.facebook.com/NaHaiWriMo  
[2] „To help with haiku fundamentals, please have a look at "Becoming a Haiku Poet" at https://www.graceguts.com/essays/becoming-a-haiku-poet. And please review the "Haiku Checklist" at https://www.graceguts.com/essays/haiku-checklist.
[3] Michael Dylan Welch. NaHaiWriMo founder and daily writing prompter for February 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025. https://www.nahaiwrimo.com/meet-the-prompters/michael-dylan-welch
[4] Du Mu (杜牧) lived from 803 to around 852. He is one of the most important poets of the Tang period and that is why we find ten of his poems in the anthology 300 Poems of the Tang Dynasty (唐詩三百首). Du Mu is not only famous for his poems, but also for his calligraphy and 20 volumes of prose have survived. Eight volumes of his poems are preserved in the collection Complete Poems of the Tang Dynasty (全唐詩) from 1705. This collection, like the well-known dictionary (康熙字典), goes back to Emperor Kangxi (清熙帝), who lived from 1654-1722.
[5] This refers to the Sendero Luminoso. I've been driving on the altiplano, when this group still was active; the piste has been hardly recognizable and we didn't see more than two vehicles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shining_Path
[6] There is also a story behind this haiku. I was traveling with a friend, a mountain climber, and other friends in the Andes of Ecuador. They wanted to climb Chimborazo and Cotopaxi. He had once tried to climb Cho Oyu in the Himalayas. He lost one of his ice crampons for his shoes and slipped into a crevasse. There he was able to grab a lifeline - to the right and left of the crevasse it had been fixed to corpses that were frozen in the clacier, most probably after an avalanche. But that way he was able to climb out. Unfortunately, he died of a brain tumor two years ago. RIP Dieter!
[7] A Walk in the Woods is a 2015 American biographical comedy-drama film directed by Ken Kwapis and starring Robert Redford, Nick Nolte and Emma Thompson.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Walk_in_the_Woods_(film)
[8] The Beinn na Caillich is a hill on the Isle of Skye near Broadford.
[9] Kanchenjunga is a mountain on the border of Nepal and India, which I have visited twice. While I was watching the mountain from a terrace in the early morning, a goup of Krishna devotees passed below chanting (that's called samkirtan); they didn't belong to ISKCON.
[10] I prefer this variant.

.