Featuring haiku brought to blossom by terrific writers from #HaikuSeed prompts:
bird, porch, high tide, enter, butterfly, summer moon
heatwave—
the sunbird prefers my window
to the frangipani
– Alaka Y.
@alwrites
A wonderful haiku. After I finished reading, it felt like I’m experiencing sweltering heat myself, but without company of the sunbird that was here on my windowsill just a moment ago.
When haiku become specific about species of flora and fauna, it can be a hit or miss from the reader’s perspective.
I assume one of the reasons for a miss is not being familiar with the type of birds/flowers and their relationship to various seasons. I’m guilty of having only little knowledge about these things. Having said that, it more often than not does not matter.
As a reader, I guess our mind usually substitutes a vague alternative for that flower, this bird when we don’t know specifics about them. And it is wonderful that the haiku’s sensory effect is still experienced by the readers even after we blatantly replace the writer’s well thought-out subjects with hazy forms.
So when using such specific identification in the haiku does work, it transports the reader to a different place and they are almost convinced it is a moment they have experienced themselves. This haiku does that.
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summer porch
fresh air replaces
the relatives
– George Hawkins
@GeorgeH85169860
I love haiku which use as one of the juxtaposing images a personal view of the writer expressed strangely strongly in an otherwise trivial moment. This paints the outlook the writer is expressing with playful and petty silliness.
By focusing on the freshness of air, the writer is actually expressing his feelings about the relatives who were there visiting.
It may well be that the relatives themselves are a good bunch of people. This take, this almost vehement expression of relief found in the fresh air could be interpreted as a sign of weariness on part of the writer. Relationships get tiring. And for people who are usually reserved and can keep in touch with only a handful of people at a given point of their life, visitations and family gatherings could easily turn into obligations that leave them bitter. Much of what I’m interpreting here is heavily influenced by my own weariness towards human relationships, so I cannot speak to the writer’s thoughts but I can say they created a brilliant haiku I thoroughly enjoyed.
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porch swing
the to and fro
of spring rain
– Jacob Blumner
@leftinflint
Visually, this is a beautiful haiku.
But for me this haiku is resoundingly acoustic. What a composition!
Each line is a bit of music that when rendered together produces a surreal symphony.
Just imagine you are on the porch swing and it is raining outside. Do you hear the metallic squeaks as you swing? The sound that would usually irritate you, is now almost hypnotic in its rhythmic pattern as you go to and fro.
As you reach the high point in your swing, there is no wind and you hear the sound of rain louder and clearer. As you begin to fall back in your swing, wind rushes against your ears and the sound of rain is dulled by the whooshing wind.
This is the to and fro of spring rain is see… no, hear, in this haiku.
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summer light
its multicolours flood
the church apse
– Marilyn Ward
@deer_ward
I did not know at the time of reading what a church apse is. But this atmospheric haiku showed it to me regardless.
We talked about haiku describing very specific things earlier in this post. This is somewhere on the opposite end of the spectrum, at least in the first two lines.
If the image this haiku paints is the goal, then one could easily choose to use church’s multicolor mosaic windows instead to setup the scene. Maybe they could even mention the name of the artwork or the artist.
Marilyn is clever in her creativity. She does not talk about what is creating the colors or how the colors are created. Instead she states a fact to bring in a kigo. Oh, so clever! All these colors inside the church are still summer light, only color shifted, refracted, reflected.
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summer moon
I thought I’d never
see you again
– Paul David Mena
@pauldavidmena
This haiku has been pulling at my heart every time I read it, deeper and deeper. So melancholic.
The absolute relief the person would be feeling when uttering these words. The trembling emotion the one hearing it would feeling. All of it in the context of COVID-19 pandemic. Imagine how many people would have been having this thought run on repeat in their head. So saddening to even imagine. Kudos to the writer. The haiku packed a lot in few simple words.
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spring joy–
the child becomes
a butterfly
– Lafcadio
@juliusorlovsky
I love the innocence in the picture this one paints. I imagine a child running behind butterflies and dragonflies. Seeing them take off before he could be near enough, he changes strategy.
He slowly walks from one flowering plant to another, turns in circles every now and then, pauses at certain flowers like the butterfly he is pursuing. This is how the child becomes a butterfly.
And I would assume he is thoroughly enjoying wading between spring dew covered plants, chasing and being a butterfly.
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butterfly kisses–
spring unfurls
from a cocoon
– Pippa Phillips
@IpsaHerself
Do butterflies recognize cocoons in the wild? I just got that doubt as I started commenting on the haiku. I mean, do they know what cocoons are, even if they don’t know they themselves come from cocoons?
It is an amusing and precious image, a butterfly going about its business in a field of plants brushes against a cocoon hanging from a leaf, giving it a butterfly kiss.
And I love the image of spring unfurls from a cocoon, what an effect the word unfurl has here. I also love that Pippa’s haiku allows for another interpretation. Some people can become reclusive, shut themselves off from everyone else and not let things like friendship and love be a part of their life due to a wide variety of reasons that play with their mental health. A hard shell forms around them. They let it and the usual acts of kindness or support don’t break it. They might not be unhappy per se, at least in few aspects like one would suspect of a reclusive and cocooned person. But one hopes these people find someone or something in their life that brings to them gentleness and light-heartedness of a butterfly kiss that let’s them shed their cocoon and unfurl like spring. I might be sounding pretentious or something speaking of mental health this way, believe me I would write it differently and more sensitively if I had the skill. But I actually related to this interpretation of this delightful haiku. My wife is the butterfly kiss that allowed me to unfurl from a shell I was long holed up in. In there, the possibility of an evolution into spring was a distant thought. So far away was it that I almost forgot what spring was, or what spring could be at one point. But I look at myself before and after I met her, I cannot now say it in any other words but lend Pippa Phillips’s – spring unfurled from a cocoon.
Sorry if I made this haiku commentary about me in the end here, but it touched me deeply and I am thankful to the writer for this haiku.
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— Sankara Jayanth Sudanagunta
Founding Editor
@coffeeandhaiku
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Special Mentions
a caterpillar
gets its wings early
in the beak of a robin
– Skyeku, @FictionCrumbs
high tide
each foot print
fills with sand
– Jacob Blumner, @leftinflint
spring
enters the picture
on a leaf.
– Sarita Talwai, @TalwaiSarita
painting the porch
spring green
on my fingers
– Sam Roberts, @SirSamRoberts
flickering porch lights tonight they summon the dead
– Silk~, @Silk73507704
high tide in spring
a curlew dances
on a strip of sand
– @YDryw
shadows of birds
enter the bedroom
with morning sun
– John Hudak, @iamcynical
noon—
a jezebel wanders
in the mango grove
– Alaka Y, @alwrites
falling to earth
face first
summer moon
– Jenn R-J, @jennfel
hopping on plum twig
a tiny bird~
spring in feet
– Meraki, @Meraki_k
spring breeze
she doodles
butterflies
– Nancy Smith, @NancySm93536930
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Click the above button to read more haiku by writers on Twitter for the #HaikuSeed prompts listed in this feature blogpost.
Copyrights Disclaimer:
- All featured works are copyrighted to the respective writers. We would love it if you cite being our journal if your work is going to be published elsewhere, no obligations though.
- Photos used in our journal are taken by and copyrighted to Sankara Jayanth Sudanagunta unless stated otherwise.
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Haiku Seed Journal 
Wonderful haiku and commentary per usual. Thanks for including one of my haiku under Special Mentions. ~Nancy Brady Smith AKA the pedometer geek