Haiku for National Haiku Writing Month – December 2023 First 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 13th year. [1] I enjoy writing to the prompts on Facebook. Here are some interesting links: [2]. The prompter for December  2023 is Agnes Eva Savich.

少婦城南欲斷腸，
征人薊北空回首。
燕歌行并序。
高適。
The young women in the southern city are broken hearted,
The frontier guardsmen in northern Ji long for home in vain.
Song of Yan, with a Preface
Gao Shi [3]

picnic
at the rock shelter
don't go missing
~ rock shelter

sorry
at the cooperative store
only leghorns no longhorns
~ longhorns

colored foliage
just like
the last family portrait
~ foliage

no war
n sight
bird scat on the windshield
~ guano

they never played
on Nauru
the guano apes
~ guano

at the waterhole
kids filling bottles
despite the cattle
~ waterhole



stone monuments
at the creek bottom
still feeling the water
~ creek bottom

frosty night
no snow falling
no stars either
~ star party

holy catfish
there's nothing holy
save his life
~ catfish

hiking around
fitzroy and cerro torre
a taste of champagne
~ batholith

limestone cave
drip ・ drip ・ drip
preserved time
~ limestone

cypress roots
on the path to the lilies
murmuring brook
~ cypress roots

frost and foam
falling water
a kind of solace
~ waterfall




wildfire
in the outback
don't stop
~ wildfire

walking across snow
crunch ・ crunch ・ crunch
quagmire at the lake
~ ciénega

wind and ivy
tearing at the sandstone
still living there
~ sandstone

Links and Annotations:
[1] https://www.facebook.com/NaHaiWriMo National Haiku Writing Month
[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] Gao Shi (高適) lived from about 704 until 765[and was a poet, politician, and general of the Tang Dynasty, and is also known as one of the "Four Frontier Poets" Two of his poems appear in the anthology Three Hundred Tang Poems (唐詩三百首), but the collection Complete Poems of the Tang Dynasty (全唐诗) contains about 200 of his poems. Recently a book has been published in Shanghai containing 129 of his poems. 高文，王刘纯: 高适岑参选。上海古籍出版社  2016。ISBN: ‎978-7532580262。
Yan (燕) is the character for swallow, but in the poem it means a region in ancient Liaoning and North Hebei. Ji (薊) is a district in Hebei Province.

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