Early Fall

Haiga

Dear Readers,

Sept. 2024

Are you stacking cordwood, arranging bittersweet and grapevine wreaths for your front door, tying corn shocks to your porch posts, and picking pumpkins and mums for display? Maybe you’re stocking up on Halloween candy, or designing a costume. You may be settling into cooler temps in your part of the world, but here, wet summer days have lingered through the month. We’ve recently moved to a New Jersey shore town and would like to create a “coastal fall” look on our porch, but may settle for the few bronzey mums that our denizen deer have sampled, maybe an impervious pumpkin or two this first season of unpacking. Some in the community have gone to festoons of autumn leaves — and campaign flags — this fall’s feature, for sure...

Photo by Wes McFee on Unsplash

Poetry Plus Imagery: Fall Haiga

An image paired with Haiku is alternately called Haiga or Shahai. This link has a good explanation of Haiku with a Picture.

Chrysanthemum and twig - from garden for vase Under the Basho archive

Tanka - Walk amid the/autumn brambles/ don’t avoid the scrapes and scratches/face the light, now remember/and don’t ignore the sorrows

Tanka: a burst of fall/fades in winter light/number the days in poems/every minute is yours/so take it, then let it go.

hold on to the dream…/that’s all we have/when all is/said and done

fire of an old day — anticipation

colors fade/in cold stream/autumn remnants

field mice skitter/in the corn bin/dust and dried husks

© Mary Ellen Gambutti