HAIKU DIALOGUE – A Walk on the Wild Side – Photo 3

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 4 – In the Eye of a Horse

I’ve taken many up close photos of a horse’s eye and am always amazed how when I cease to see the body, I see into the horse in a way I wouldn’t normally from a distance. Meet the eye of any creature and you feel something pass between you as I did with this particular horse. Have you had any experiences around large animals like a horse? Do you bet on racing horses, own one yourself, or have you ever ridden a horse, or like me, simply passed the time in a pasture talking to one!

The deadline is midnight Pacific Standard Time, Saturday January 30, 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Please submit one or two original unpublished haiku inspired by the week’s theme by clicking here: Contact Form.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 3 – Peering into Emptiness:

My thanks to every poet who submitted poems. I spent many hours reading and rereading your offers. To include as many poets as possible, I could only choose one poem per poet. At times this made my job difficult, as I enjoyed both offers. Other times, a few poets sent more than the limit of two poems. I only looked at the first two, and deleted the others, so if your best poem was number 4, it was not considered. This is to be fair to those who sent the required 2 poems. Overall, I saw concurrent themes of emptiness and I found I was drawn to those who took the photo prompt in directions that spoke to their own lives. Quite a few spoke directly to the image, and I chose what I thought the best of those. But I was amazed at the variety of human experience that resonated through this image of a parrot peering into an empty shell. Many of the poems require close reading to sense that slender thread to the image, but when you feel it, there is nothing but admiration. I may pick out a few more favorites in the comments section later, but I hope that you too, will choose your favorites and honor the selected poets with a few words. I believe in most cases, showing not telling has more heart and openness, and that juxtaposition can add depth to a poem, and the power of the image lingers longer in our minds than philosophical or didactic statements. It is all about experience, connection, and authenticity. These five poems offered me all of that and more.

empty snail shell
a silverfish
calls it home

Deborah Karl-Brandt
Bonn, Germany

This is one of the more unique responses to the image of a parrot holding an empty walnut shell. This poet was moved to write about a different type of empty shell entirely. It’s a perfect haiku with a strong image in the first line, and a resonating phrase in the second two lines. Note also, the sounds in this haiku with the sibilance of ‘snail, shell, silverfish’. There is a lot to unpack in this poem. It opens its layers like a flower the deeper you enter. Silverfish are mostly found in homes, so I am guessing the snail shell is a found object and on display among other treasures inside someone’s home. Instead of philosophizing, or telling us what to think, this poet suggests and asks that you fill the beautiful space between the image and the phrase with your own musings. A shell, once filled with life, now hosts another life. The connotations of the word ‘home’ reminds us it was once the snail’s home, that it might have ended up inside a person’s home, and finally found additional use to become home for a silverfish. I see the cycle of life, how death can be a beginning, not an ending and emptiness can be filled.

full moon . . .
my bowl
is not enough

Melanie Vance

Another haiku that opens with a strong image and follows with a thought-provoking phrase. The first thing that came to me was the poet opened with a ‘full moon’, after viewing an image of a parrot peering into an empty shell. Fullness as opposed to emptiness. I felt this was the slender thread that helped me see what might have been the poet’s inspiration. The bowl in the second line brings me to sustenance, our bowl, whether empty or filled, can it compete with the full moon? This poem made me think of what lies beyond emptiness. We can have an empty bowl, a full bowl, wealth or poverty, death, or life, but can we live without a full moon? The constancy of the moon’s cycles, the fullness of the moon, goes beyond what we might perceive as our need and reliance on what we see as our bowl. ‘my bowl is not enough’, but the full moon will always fill us in so many ways.

drinking
with an old friend
the mead moon

Orense Nicod, Paris France

Another unusual take on the evocative image of a parrot staring into an empty shell. I sense that the poet felt the loneliness of the scene, felt empathy towards the bird yet might have been inspired to write a reaffirming haiku to counterbalance what we might feel as pity towards what we might think an empty life. Instead, we are treated to the silent companionship of drinking with an ‘old friend’, be it a metaphor, a real-life friend, or even, as I began to suspect, the ‘mead moon’ as drinking buddy. It has a sense of solitariness, without loneliness. Mead moon is an early harvest moon, a time of celebration, rebirth, not to mention a special wine with a lot of history behind it. Altogether an uplifting haiku that reaffirms the difference between choosing aloneness or loneliness as a state of mind.

black coffee
stirring the nothingness
of the day

Marina Bellini

This senryu grew on me. Right away I fell in love with the figurative language of ‘stirring the nothingness of the day’. Then I looked closer and like the jolt of caffeine ‘black coffee’ might offer, I suddenly felt the connection between the first line and the following two. I love surprises! Why would you stir black coffee? Such is the power of connotations, of word choices, of juxtaposition. The idea of stirring coffee that doesn’t need stirring enhances that sense of ‘nothingness’, or perhaps ennui. It’s a poem I can so easily visualize, the slow stirring, the blankness of expression, the ‘nothingness’. It could be a poem for the times, as we live our days under the restrictions of Covid. Yet haven’t we all had days of ‘nothingness’? Days our minds shut down and we move about on remote control. The slender thread I feel towards this poem as inspired by the image is empathy towards the sameness of the parrot’s life living under a dome.

at the edge
of dignity
bread lines

Carol Judkins
Carlsbad, CA

I am impressed by the way this poet’s heart took that empty walnut shell straight to the lack of food for so many, not only around the globe, but finally, here close to home in a way we haven’t seen since the Great Depression. I am haunted by the words ‘at the edge of dignity’. For many, it is the first time they have ever had to ask for help and probably never thought to find themselves in this situation. We are raised to take pride in our ability to put food on the table for our loved ones. How shattering it must be to have done so all your life and suddenly find yourself in a bread line. The poet could have said food line, foodbank, but ‘bread lines’ brought back our past and signifies the importance of bread as manna, or the Bread of Life. Even more it’s a reminder to respect the dignity of all those who find themselves in need.

below are the rest of the selections:

the freedom
we thought we had
travel ban

Bryan Rickert

 

pack up call
a palmful of moonlight
in the beggar’s bowl

Arvinder Kaur
Chandigarh,India

 

sunrise
the silence
of an empty inbox

Jackie Chou
Pico Rivera, CA USA

 

the way she places
her china teacup
on its matching saucer

Olivier Schopfer, Switzerland

 

refugee tent
as if glances
could fill the bowl

Helga Stania

 

temple bell
opening the door
to a new life

Robert Kingston

 

in a nutshell –
the void between stars
is filling my dreams

Cristina Angelescu, Romania

 

waiting for Dad…
his pockets
empty

Margaret Mahony

 

empty shell
the memories
mom tries to claw back

Tracy Davidson
Warwickshire, UK

 

lockdown —
staring into the depths
of my empty cup

Helen Ogden

 

walnut shell
what was my life before
my daughters were born

Vandana Parashar

 

the monk
emptying his mind
alms bowl

Kanjini Devi

 

the widow’s hands
embrace his empty cup
old tea stains

Jan Dobb
Canberra, Australia

 

flirting
with the void
old age

Pat Davis Pembroke, NH

 

an empty shell-
my struggle to write
haiku

Dorothy Burrows

 

forlorn parrot
his one word:
hello!

Merridy Cox
Peterborough, Ontario, Canada

 

midnight jazz
in the Milky Way
hidden solitude

Tsanka Shishkova

 

tangled twigs —
a distant parrot enters
the fog

Taofeek Ayeyemi
Abeokuta, Nigeria

 

shell game
the flash and dazzle
of a smooth talker

Laurie Greer
Washington, DC

 

second wave
rows and rows
of empty shelves

mRehm

 

cold night
the cat’s tongue
warms my void

Keiko Izawa

 

conservatory view
beyond the blossoms
the snow

Ann K. Schwader
Westminster, CO

 

face-time . . .
sharing peanut butter
kisses

Carole Harrison,
jamberoo, Australia

 

empty wine bottle –
summer romance
turns to fall

Alan Harvey

 

birdsong
despite the cage
around it

Michele L. Harvey

 

a remnant
in the walnut shell …
father’s big dream

Agus Maulana Sunjaya
Tangerang, Indonesia

 

caged bird
. . . the call of sky
in every feather

Sushama Kapur

 

family reunion
auntie’s glass
always half empty

Corine Timmer

 

one thousand
square foot house –
my pandemic birdcage

Valentina Ranaldi-Adams
Fairlawn, Ohio USA

 

line at the food bank
the distance
between meals

Lorraine A. Padden

 

lockdown
the parrot repeating
to be or not to be

cezar-florin Ciobîcă

 

one walnut
really hate
this new diet

Paul Geiger

 

virtual church
a PayPal link in Chat
during the offering

John S Green
Bellingham, WA

 

toasting the new year
with a broken glass
optimist

Charles Harmon
Los Angeles, California

 

‘bird brain!’
I smile secretly
at the compliment

Dana Rapisardi

 

gazing into
our spalted maple bowl —
star trails!

Sheila Sondik
Belingham, WA

 

quantum mechanics
my parrot understands it
as much as I do

M. R. Defibaugh

 

sold to highest bidder a soul

Roberta Beach Jacobson
Indianola, IA, USA

 

generations in the zoo –
a parrot considering
what is freedom

Tomislav Maretić

 

clear night stardome quiet

Tim Cremin
Andover, Massachusetts

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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