Friday, July 11, 2014

Carpe Diem #512 Shiki (2), ''A Flash of Lightning''


Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Today another nice haiku by Shiki, the haiku-poet who brought haiku into the 20th century. In his first haiku of this month I chose a haiku which was pointing towards the industrial revolution, this haiku is more in the nature-sense as Shiki saw it.

inazuma ya mori no sukima ni mizu mo mitari

a flash of lightning;
between the trees of the forest,
water appears

© Masaoka Shiki

Shiki has here restricted the subject to its own domain, that of physical sight. When the lightning flashes, pools of water left from the rain and the streams and rivulets suddenly flash white and blinding before us. The world become a place of black and white, with no other colours.

Credits: a flash of lightning through the forest
And here is my response on this haiku by Shiki:

the night becomes day
lightning flash colouring the sky -
a hot summer night

© Chèvrefeuille

I like thunder and lightning and last night we had a ''terrible'' thunderstorm after a hot summer day. It was spectacular to see the night sky turn into all kinds of colors as light as the day. Awesome!

This episode is open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and will remain open until July 14th at noon. I will try to publish our next episode, the third haiku by Basho, later on. For now ... have fun, be inspired and share your haiku with us all.


2 comments:

  1. I'm awfully sorry if this is a duplicate comment. The previous one didn't seem to go through and I didn't see a notice that my comment was saved for approval. If I missed the notice, I apologize.
    My creation can be found at the link below. I used your beautiful photograph, as it inspired me.
    http://poetryofthenetherworld.blogspot.com/2014/07/resiliant-sky.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is an interesting video on the birth of lightning:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MUYsIjTKvk

    ReplyDelete