HAIKU DIALOGUE – The Language of Flowers – Daffodil – A Death Poem

The Language of Flowers: A Global Perspective with Guest Editor Carole MacRury

Floriography, the sending of secret messages via coded flower arrangements, was popular during the Victorian Era (between 1837 and 1901). Hanakotoba is the Japanese form of the Language of Flowers. Countries around the globe have their own language, myths, meanings, history and symbolism pertaining to flowers, some going back thousands of years. While the sending of secret messages through flowers might not be as popular today as it was in the Victoria age, we still use flowers to express significant moments in our lives, such as births, deaths, weddings, religious services, holidays and specific cultural and personal ceremonies.

We grow gardens, arrange flowers, and pick wildflowers to brighten our homes. The scent of flowers can lift our spirits or cause an allergic reaction. We communicate through the color of flowers. White, for instance, can represent purity, innocence, or death depending on one’s culture. Flowers throughout history have been used for their mind-altering effects. The poppy for instance evokes remembrance of those fallen in war, but also represents their medicinal ability to ease pain and our passage out of this world, or cause addiction. Flowers flavor and spice our food, or help heal our ailments through herbal remedies. Many countries around the globe have a national flower. Our hearts are lifted or broken through flowers, either cultured or wild. We are inspired by flowers through art, music and literature, whether exploring the sensuality of Georgia O’Keefe’s blossoms, or taking a trip down memory lane listening to Pete Seeger’s ageless melody, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” a song as relevant today as yesterday. Sadi, an ancient Sufi poet says, “buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.”

My photos are meant to inspire you to dig deep into your own relationship with flowers within the framework of your own specific cultures through each weekly sub-theme. My preference has always been to look closely into flowers in all stages of their lives: bud, blossom, fading. I find that looking into the heart of a flower one often finds oneself.

Banner Art courtesy of Sondra J. Byrnes Haiku Poet and Ikebana Artist

next week’s theme:  Sowing Seeds:  Literally and Metaphorically 

This image was taken in an artsy one-street town called Edison. Instead of using a curtain or blind, the owner had brightened the weathered window of their humble home with empty flower seed packets and flower bed markers. I can only imagine the backyard must surely have had a wonderful garden. The rusted handle and peeling paint had a sense of wabi-sabi. After exploring so many aspects of the Language of Flowers, let’s sow seeds literally and metaphorically. Feel free to interpret the prompt as openly as you care to.

We sow seeds, scatter seeds and plant seeds. Flowers such as dandelions and milkweed pods go to seed and are launched on the wind. We also go to seed. We sow seeds for tomorrow in many ways, for many different gardens. Teachers sow seeds of knowledge, parents sow seeds of love. We also sow seeds of hope, peace and kindness within our families, friendships, and communities. We recognize the power of a seed to rise through a crack in concrete. We water and nurture seeds. We take part in community gardens. I think of the red amaryllis and the care we take to see it bloom each Christmas. Seeds begin in darkness, then grow toward the light. We anticipate the appearance of new shoots. Seeds become flowers, become fruit. As in the lyrics to “The Rose,” written by Amanda McBroom and sung by Bette Midler, ‘some say love, it is a hunger, an endless aching need. I say love, it is a flower, and you, its only seed.’ Please feel free to let the image of empty seed packets inspire you, or the thoughts included in this prose. Share a haiku or two on what sowing seeds means or suggests to you.

I’d like to take this moment to thank everyone for trusting me with your haiku for the past nine weeks. I am deeply appreciative of your participation and the occasional uplifting note. I am always amazed at the wonderful responses that come in for each prompt. I’d especially like to thank managing editor, kjmunro, and post manager, Lori Zajkowski, and The Haiku Foundation for inviting me once more to be guest editor of Haiku Dialogue. This forum truly is a labor of love for all involved.

The deadline is midnight Pacific Daylight Time, Saturday July 02, 2022.

Please use the Haiku Dialogue submission form below to enter one or two original unpublished haiku inspired by the week’s theme, and then press Submit to send your entry. (The Submit button will not be available until the Name, Email, and Place of Residence fields are filled in.) With your poem, please include any special formatting requirements & your name & residence as you would like it to appear in the column. 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 Daffodil: A Death Poem:

Thank you, dear poets, for your amazing response to this week’s prompt on writing a death poem. I received a record number of submissions this week. I also discovered that some of you wrote a poem about death, rather than a personal death poem. Many of these poems were written to the loss of loved ones, poems of remembrance and lingering grief. Beautiful and touching poems that I’m sure to see in future publications, but I was looking for poems written in the moment, contemplating one’s own death or that spoke to the transience of life. The prompt’s prose contained examples of death poems by our contemporaries and old masters as well as a poem showing how nature can be a metaphor expressing the transience of life. I gravitated towards poems that took on this challenge, poems that evoked emotion and allowed the reader to intuit deeper thoughts.

I favor haiku that communicate through first person pronouns. I find poems that address the ‘you’ can distance me from the poem. And like the Japanese death poems of the past, I received a variety of emotional overtones from poignant truths to poems written with irony and humor. I felt each poem communicated one’s truth in a believable way. While I mentioned there was no need to name a flower, many of you did anyway, and many of these poems beautifully expressed the transience of life. Nature is a metaphor for the fleetingness of life, as we all know through the cherry blossoms. But in fact, all flowers bloom and die as we do, so the language of all flowers speaks to our short lives as well. I am humbled to have had the privilege of reading your poems, and I hope all of you, as I did, find a new appreciation for life in the depths of these poems.

Due to the personal nature of these poems my comments will be lighter than usual. I believe strongly in a poem being able to speak for itself, and I would like to leave space for each of you to experience these poems without deep analysis. The best haiku in my opinion defy analysis. One simply absorbs their ahhness in stillness and silence, much as we do a spectacular sunset.

Here is a sampling of the poems that spoke to me immediately and whose meanings deepened with each reading. Many of the haiku on the longer list require close readings to appreciate the subtle metaphor within strong images. Please share your favorites in the comments section.

as I sit down
to write a death poem
mockingbird

Vandana Parashar
India

I was immediately drawn to Vandana’s poem because of her choice of bird in the last line. Mockingbirds are noted for mimicking the calls and songs of other birds. To me, this poem expresses what might indeed be the fear and reluctance many of us might face as we attempt to follow a poetic practice not part of our own culture. The appeal for me is the sense of self-doubt combined with respect for the East-Asian poets of the past. Then again, who knows what that little bird might be singing in the poet’s ear. Additionally, the connotations of mock/mocking add another layer to this honest poem.

my spirit a dust mote carried in the sunbeam

petro c. k.
Seattle, Washington

I love the metaphor in this lovely monoku. Most of us are familiar with dust motes, those glittering particles dancing in a sunbeam. Our eyes are led up the beam as if climbing a ladder to the unknown. The poem is bracketed in alliterative words, ‘spirit/sunbeam,’ and the word ‘carried’ adds a tender note to the release of one’s spirit at death. A picturesque way of viewing the end of life. When I think of “ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” I will remember this poem and be reminded of the cycle of all living things.

last breath
snow geese fly over my
miserable tavern

Billy Guerriero
Littleton, CO

I found this poem reminiscent of the master’s poems found within the book Japanese Death Poems, by Yoel Hoffman. I had to admire its frankness and honesty. The presence of snow geese adds an additional seasonal layer to this humble death poem. Perhaps death is another sort of migration. A miserable tavern made less miserable by the beauty of white snow geese flying overhead. Perhaps the spirit of the departed flies with them.

between two worlds the space of a breath

Neena Singh
Chandigarh, India

I felt this poem spoke best to the transience of life and reminded me that we are only a breath away from leaving this world for the unknown or the known depending on one’s spiritual and religious beliefs. Some cultures might put names to these two worlds, but for me, it works best as a time capsule where we exist between birth and death. Between our first breath and our last.

deadheading
the daffodils
my turn soon

Nancy Orr
Lewiston, Maine, USA

This was my favorite of the daffodil submissions. I appreciated its neutral and accepting tone, like the Japanese poets who recognized death as an expected part of living our lives. The calm act of deadheading daffodils reminds us that flowers fade, and removing the detritus of a flower ensures its future growth.

clouds furling unfurling this transient life

Susan Burch
Hagerstown, MD

Another evocative metaphor for our short lives. I am always looking for shapes in clouds, but no sooner do I find one, it’s already shape-shifting and disappearing, feathering itself out of existence in currents of wind. This monoku brings to mind Buddhist views on impermanence – everything changes and nothing lasts forever. A doctrine that for many brings comfort.

& here are the rest of the selections:

red autumn leaves
against a blue sky . . .
I, too, will leave this life
on a high note

Corine Timmer
Portugal/The Netherlands

 

longest journey…
returning into
star light

Deborah Karl-Brandt
Bonn, Germany

 

crickets instead of church bells

Allyson Whipple
St. Louis, MO

 

wilted daffodils…
the fleeting tick-tock
of the wall clock

Jackie Chou
United States

 

saved plot the greening of my parent’s graves

martin gottlieb cohen
Egg Harbor, NJ U.S.

 

Finally!
no more fuss…
where are my cigarettes?

Mike Fainzilber
Rehovot, Israel

 

Queen Anne’s lace
mother
calls me home

marilyn ashbaugh
edwardsburg, michigan

 

this life
the darkness
between fireflies

Bryan Rickert
Belleville, Illinois USA

 

dandelion . . .
all that remains
of my dreams

Rosa Maria Di Salvatore
Catania (Italy)

 

a brief flight
of a paper kite
one’s whole life

Nikola Đuretić
Zagreb (Croatia)

 

remodeled park
some other old woman
feeds the pigeons

Danijela Grbelja
Sibenik, Croatia

 

queen of the night
after a short fantasy
a long sleep

Teiichi Suzuki
Japan

 

on the day
I finally let go
dandelion puff

Tony Williams
Scotland, UK

 

after blooming….
I’ll not fear sharing
the lily’s destiny

Robert Kingston
Chelmsford, United Kingdom

 

this year too
dogwood buds…
my unsaid goodbye

Madhuri Pillai
Australia

 

fading star
one last twinkle
of my dancing toes

Tracy Davidson
Warwickshire, UK

 

already as dead as I can be new moon

Surashree Joshi
Pune, India

 

butterfly the relativity of ephemeral

Mirela Brăilean
România

 

engraver’s family discount
the date after my dash
blank

Caroline Giles Banks
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

 

outgoing tide
I add my goodbye
to the tossed bottle

Pris Campbell
US

 

………buried
.at the bottom
of my to do list
…death poem

Sheila Sondik
Bellingham, WA (USA)

 

floating sunshine
I am the water
the water is me

Minal Sarosh
Ahmedabad, India

 

crumpled fuchsia
every flower
I have loved

Colette Kern
United States

 

a sky full of stars
oceans of sea-thrift
my brief life

J E Jeanie Armstrong
Canterbury UK

 

old clock chimes
the pianist plays
his last note

Sherry Grant
Auckland, New Zealand

 

chicory
what wakes us
lays us to rest

Laurie Greer
Washington, DC

 

life support
a plastic daffodil
atop the pen

Richard Matta
San Diego, California USA

 

The last grain falls —
The hand turns the hourglass:
I’m still here

Jenny Shepherd
London, UK

 

knowing nothing
about the road ahead
a wild iris blooms

Lori Kiefer
London, UK

 

morning glories
joys end
too soon

Susan Farner
USA

 

final chorus
my ukulele fades
to silence

Louise Hopewell
Australia

 

sakura viewing
the way the last bloom fades
the world

Joe Sebastian
Bangalore, India

 

windflower
bequeathing these bones
to science

Mariel Herbert
California, USA

 

all that I seek
is seeking me
wheat harvest moon

Carole Harrison
Jamberoo, Australia

 

leaving…
will flowers be
the only reward

Carol Reynolds
Australia

 

silence
finds us all
cicada husk

James Gaskin
Fukushima, Japan

 

roses
that I will not see wither …..
autumn wind

Angiola Inglese
Italia

 

the deaths
I have missed in the process
of living

Vijay Prasad
Patna, India

 

fra la notte e l’alba
conto i miei anni…
così leggero il vento

between night and dawn
I count my years ….
so light is the wind

Giuliana Ravaglia
Bologna Italia

 

my coffee mug
van Gogh’s Almond Blossom
my burial urn

Maxianne Berger
Outremont, Quebec

 

a star-filled sky
the pinholes
in my casket

M. R. Defibaugh
USA

 

cape jasmine . . .
all that I shall remember
on my deathbed

Milan Rajkumar
Imphal, India

 

dandelion clock …
the time it takes
to make a last wish

Annie Wilson
Shropshire, UK

 

Life –
a snowflake
on the palm

Ivan Ivančan
Croatia

 

pressed pear petals
how light-bodied
I become

Maya Daneva
The Netherlands

 

relapse
the zinnia knows
it’s time

Margaret Tau
New Bern, North Carolina

 

purple crocuses…
the first
and the last

Nancy Brady
Ohio, USA

 

deep blue twilight
burning in the sky
one more star

Jonathan English
Washington, DC

 

let loose at last my love this driftwood swan song

Kath Abela Wilson
Pasadena, California, USA

 

all I know are sad songs these day lilies

Pippa Phillips
Kansas City, MO

 

and what
last flower
shall we sip . . .
dear hummingbird

wendy c. bialek
az, usa

 

striking my last match funeral candle

Seretta Martin
California, USA

 

last wave
scent of the sea
in my bones

Carol Judkins
Carlsbad, CA

 

mayfly
I wonder what’s left
of my life

Florin C. Ciobica
Romania

 

twilight the pen running dry

P. H. Fischer
Vancouver, Canada

 

wave after wave
do they know
how they end?

Ingrid Baluchi
North Macedonia

 

just like
a falling maple leaf…
I shall go

Ram Chandran
India

 

Indian summer
the old cat absorbs
his last bit of sun

Terri French
AL

 

pasque once vibrant…
now pale in the coming
of my winter

Pat Geyer
East Brunswick, NJ USA

 

high tide coming
a shell becomes
a part of the sea

Zelyko Funda
Hrvatska

 

funeral pyre
a pile
of tattered pride

Amrutha Prabhu
Bengaluru, India

 

winter ends the pallor of pheasant eye white

simonj
UK

 

mute swan
I forever hold
my peace

John Pappas
United States

 

bar-do
not the cymbals or butter lamps
just the musk rose

Sonam Chhoki
Bhutan

 

mayfly . . .
its one-day life followed
by its shadow

Tomislav Maretić
Croatia

 

last breath…
all those years
of not living

Mona Bedi
Delhi, India

 

midnight sea sings a cappella

Helen Buckingham
United Kingdom

 

this train
headed for the horizon . . .
a firefly’s glow

Jonathan Roman
Yonkers, New York

 

Were we even flowers?
Dried honesty in an old vase,
those dark eyes

Sarah Davies
Bedford, UK

 

Sunset
Who knows that the horizon is not
a path

Tramonto
Chissà che l’orizzonte non sia
un sentiero

Maria Cezza
Maglie – Lecce – Italia

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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