Daily Archives: December 22, 2014

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Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,As we are on our way to the end of 2014 we have had wonderful modern kigo (seasonwords) compiled by Jane Reichhold in her saijiki “A Dictionary of Haiku” and today we are going further with the exploration of those wonderful modern kigo. Today we have straw for prompt and that’s a nice one, but also a challenging one.I love to share a haiku by Matsuo Basho (my master) in which he writes about straw. Here it is:komo wo ki te   tare bito imasu   hana no haru
wrapped in a straw mat
who can this great one be?
flowers of spring

© Basho (1644-1694)

With this haiku came a preface “welcoming the New Year in Kyoto”, this haiku is translated by Jane Reichhold and of course I have to share a haiku on straw written by her:

on frozen snow
still warm from the cow barn
broken straw

© Jane Reichhold

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A wonderful, almost Christmas fitting haiku … a nice one … How to write my own haiku on straw? Well here it is … a little bit romance in this dark time before Christmas.

between straw bales

two youngsters exploring love

their first kiss

© Chèvrefeuille

Hm … a nice one I think …. sometimes I have to go outside my normal way of writing haiku … and so I came up with this one … I can imagine how this must be for these youngsters. I still remember my first kiss like yesterday.

Kristjaan Panneman our host