HAIKU DIALOGUE – A Walk on the Wild Side – Photo 2

A Walk on the Wild Side: Relating to the animal world – with guest editor Carole MacRury

Issa showed compassion to animals in many of his haiku, such as “butterfly flitting– / I too am made / of dust” and “spring breeze– / monkey families, too / take healing baths” (by Kobayashi Issa, translated by David G. Lanoue). Basho also noticed and related to animals in many haiku. Many of the masters were lay monks or wrote haiku through the Buddhist belief that animals are sentient beings.
We encounter many creatures in our day to day life, through our pets, walks in the wild, aquariums and zoos to name a few. We share similar drives, to reproduce, to raise young, to protect them, to find food and seek shelter. Social skills, love, and even play are also shared attributes.
I will post four photos and with each one, please take the time to note your reaction, any emotions, any memories or thoughts that crop up. What is the body language of the animal saying to you? It may be you write a haiku about the animal, or it could be you write about something that relates to your life simply by interpreting the animal’s body language, gaze, or action towards something happening in your own life.

next week’s theme: Photo 3 – Peering into Emptiness

Unlike the eagle, this parrot is kept in captivity in an exotic bird and plant conservatory. While the birds could fly freely, they were still living under a dome. There is something filled with grace in the way the bird held on to an empty walnut shell. It peered into it for a long time. It reminded me of a beggar and his bowl. What does this image remind you of? Feel free to write about the image, the bird, its domed environment, or anything that it might remind you of in your own life.

The deadline is midnight Pacific Standard Time, Saturday January 23, 2021.

Please submit one or two original unpublished haiku inspired by the week’s theme by clicking here: Contact Form.  Please put Haiku Dialogue in the Subject box, & include your name as you would like it to appear, & your place of residence, with your poem.

A few haiku will be selected for commentary each week.

Please note that by submitting, you agree that your work may appear in the column – neither acknowledgment nor acceptance emails will be sent. All communication about the poems that are posted in the column will be added as blog comments.

below is Carole’s commentary for Photo 2 – Angry Bird:

My thanks to everyone for sharing your responses to this image. The bald eagle of course has symbolic meaning for the USA so I expected a few haiku written to our troubled times. Also, the sight of a once proud eagle facing his last few days certainly brought to mind our own aging as well as that of relatives and friends. Some of you used details of the eagle and its story to spark distant links in sometimes funny, sometimes poignant ways. You have to read closely to find those slender threads but it is very satisfying when you feel just how the poet connected to the image. It was difficult to choose which to comment on as I would have loved to have remarked on so many! So please do bring forth favorites of your own. The following five haiku were favored because of the use of juxtaposition and resonating word choices. All five are well-crafted responses to the prompt and invite speculation. None of these haiku describe the image or rely on the image in any way. They stand on their own very well.

egg moon—
the old eagle
lost his mojo

Corine Timmer
Faro, Portugal

‘egg moon’ caught my imagination right away because I’ve photographed the moon when it was the color of an egg yolk. But as it’s used here it symbolizes renewal and rejuvenation. It’s a spring kigo that speaks to birth and the creation of new life. This is a poignant reminder that life goes on even as the eagle’s life is about to come to an end. In this case the eagle has ‘lost his mojo’, a lighthearted way of saying, his nesting days are over. A well-crafted haiku utilizing alliteration and assonance with the o and m sounds. Of course, if you are like me, who believes that metaphor is part of the human experience, then you may well also associate this old ‘eagle’ with certain people in your lives.

sea change
gulls hijack
the dawn

Helen Buckingham

Not a single word could be removed from this sparse evocative haiku. Living by the sea, I know how it changes, and the birds react to these changes. Rough seas, calm seas, low tide, high tide. There are times birds flock to feed, times they flock to soar. I live in an area where seagulls number in the thousands, and yes, they do ‘hijack the dawn’. Such a wonderful phrase. This offers a clear image and for me, it also offers sound. One might ask, what about the eagle? Well, for me, this is one of those slender threads that lead back to the eagle and the annoying gull that sensed the eagle’s weakness that day. Just as the eagle will die, the gulls will have their day, and the sea is forever changing.

winter moonlight
his last breath
in isolation

Didimay D. Dimacali
USA

Another beautiful haiku that goes beyond the image and offers us a poignant look at dying, whether it is the old eagle, or someone passing away from Covid without the comfort of loved ones by their side. Winter moonlight itself connotes a rather cold and lonely setting for a death. The moon so far away, the loved one too, out of reach, in isolation. This is certainly a poem for the times, but it can also speak to the larger picture of how we all must face death one day. A clear image and a resonating phrase with each word earnings its place.

newborn
all the years
i’ll miss

Roberta Beary
County Mayo Ireland

I could sense that open space between the first line and the phrase. It felt like the flash of a lightbulb. The sudden awareness of not having enough years left to see a newborn grow up into adulthood. That the majority of their life will go on without us. It immediately takes me back to all the sepia photos of relatives, realizing that we too, will be a sepia photo to the newborns in our lives one day. Birth and death are so deeply intertwined and I appreciate where the prompt took this poet’s thoughts.

bird sanctuary
the national emblem
gets hand fed

Bryan Rickert

This one offers multiple interpretations, so I’m not going into detail about all the ways it resonated with me except to say it made me question our national symbol which is supposed to represent strength and dignity and reminds me also, that bald eagles were once on the verge of extinction. All weighty thoughts and worries that makes me ponder this act of hand-feeding our national emblem. Certainly to me, a bird sanctuary is a positive image and offers a sense of refuge, but then ‘hand fed’ leads me along different avenues. At any rate, as a frequent visitor to bird refuges, I have to admire the cleverness of showing our national emblem in this way. A stark contrast to the impending death of a wild eagle. I enjoy the sounds in this haiku, the assonance in ‘national/hand’, and ‘emblem/fed’.

below are the rest of the selections:

reprise-
my parrot repeats
my curses

Aljoša Vuković
Šibenik, Croatia

 

getting older
all those recipes
i never used before

Deborah Karl-Brandt
Bonn, Germany

 

late for her appointment
Gran’s insistence
on lipstick

Marion Clarke

 

banyan roots-
detangling my hair
grandma’s knotted fingers

Nisha Raviprasad

 

old bald eagle –
stars and stripes fading
on the flag

Juliet Wilson

 

another friend gone
I wonder who will give
my eulogy

Vandana Parashar

 

car keys
my last hold
on independence

Pat Davis Pembroke, NH

 

ravaged by age
the bald eagle
even balder than me

Tracy Davidson
Warwickshire, UK

 

tattered feathers
I tuck my head under
my shadow

John Hawkhead

 

another year
my toenails grow
further away

Pris Campbell

 

fret not
king of birds…
the call comes

Neena Singh
Chandigarh, India

 

Inauguration Day
a fresh clutch of feathers
at the nest edge

Robert Kingston Essex , UK

 

grey moon
the sharpening point
of the old writer’s pen

Keiko Izawa

 

older and older—
my dreams of flight
grounded

Cynthia Anderson
Yucca Valley, California

 

50th celebrations
all the wrinkles
in my birthday suit

Louise Hopewell

 

back home visit
same old same old
but older

John S Green
Bellingham, WA

 

unattached
feathers stir in the wind…
widowhood

Michele L. Harvey

 

old parakeet
teaching grandpa
new words

Mona Iordan

 

black-robed justice
RBG takes her place
among the eagles

Laurie Greer
Washington, DC

 

old age –
wearing out
the snooze button

Nick T
UK

 

becalmed
an old sailor
drifts away

m. shane pruett
Salem, OR

 

old eagle
first canyon light
still hers

Ann K. Schwader
Westminster, CO

 

snow falls
the featherweight
of final layers

Kit Nagamura

 

late autumn
we finally buy
a grave

Barbara Kaufmann NY

 

elephant graveyard –
the silence descends
in circles

Cristina Angelescu, Romania

 

a lifetime
between stitches
mom’s tattered shawl

Lorraine A. Padden
San Diego, California

 

poppy field
out of the blue
hot flashes

cezar-florin ciobica

 

on a park bench
newspaper covers
another ragged cold night

Paul Geiger

 

I spot a silver hair
shining
among my worries

Cristina Povero 

 

autumn dusk
the old man bears
the weight of the moon

Barrie Levine
Wenham, Massachusetts

 

no more bucket lists
in the drawer
just a DNR order

Melanie Vance

 

phase 1B
the long silver line
to the clinic

Greer Woodward
Waimea, HI

 

EcoTarium
the eagle dreams of death
in the wild

Tim Cremin

 

no flutter of wings
Grandma leans heavily
on her walking stick

Minal Sarosh
Ahmedabad, India

 

feathered friend
in spite of all
we are alone

Ingrid Baluchi, North Macedonia

 

gravitational pull—
a lesson in physics
from my mirror

Helen Ogden

Guest Editor Carole MacRury resides in Point Roberts, Washington, a unique peninsula and border town that inspires her work. Her poems have won awards and been published worldwide, and her photographs have been featured on the covers of numerous poetry journals and anthologies. Her practice of contemplative photography along with an appreciation of haiku aesthetics helps deepen her awareness of the world around her. Both image and written word open her to the interconnectedness of all things; to surprise, mystery and a sense of wonder. She is the author of In the Company of Crows: Haiku and Tanka Between the Tides (Black Cat Press, 2008, 2nd Printing, 2018) and The Tang of Nasturtiums, an award-winning e-chapbook (Snapshot Press 2012).

Lori Zajkowski is the Post Manager for Haiku Dialogue. A novice haiku poet, she lives in New York City.

Managing Editor Katherine Munro lives in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and publishes under the name kjmunro. She is Membership Secretary for Haiku Canada, and her debut poetry collection is contractions (Red Moon Press, 2019). Find her at: kjmunro1560.wordpress.com.

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