even the turtle
can tell the time by watching
this bright spring moon
-Kobayashi Issa
spring moon watching
turtle head back to sea –
their job done
Anna Dean
turtles doze
in the castle moat
too much moonshine
Jessica Allyson
spring mud
the turtle turns his face
to the sun
Sally Quon
my grandson
digging marbles into the sand
turtle eggs
Michele Rule
Michele’s Musings
Good morning and thanks for reading with us today! Some of you may even be joining us at Munson Pond in Kelowna, BC, for our first group Ginko walk!
The very first Ginko walks took place in Japan, although they weren’t called that at the time. Poets like Basho and Issa traveled the Japanese countryside, writing prose and haiku as they went. One of my bucket list wishes is to do a ginko walk following Basho’s trail. It was a treacherous journey when Basho did it; now it’s apparently a comfortable excursion with tours lasting seven to ten days. That’s fine by me 🙂.
The word Ginko means gingko in English – a special tree found around Japan but now also planted decoratively in North America. The gingko has a beautifully shaped leaf with a delicate green colour that darkens as summer progresses. It is one of the oldest living trees in the world, predating even the dinosaur. Another name for the gingko tree is the maidenhair tree because of the similarity of the leaves to the maidenhair fern.
Heading out on a Ginko walk can be done in groups or alone. Often there will be a leader who knows a little bit about the flora and fauna of an area, although these days Google helps quite nicely with that. The pace of the walk is slow, with lots of stops to observe and make notes or jot down haiku that come to mind. Someone in the group will usually read haiku from one of the four Japanese masters and at the end of the walk people can share what they have written.
On our walk today we will be adding a special activity. I’ll be bring slips of paper and paperclips so people can write out their haiku and clip them to branches. That way visitors to the pond can take a haiku home with them!
Our next issue will have the highlights of the walk for you to read if you weren’t able to join us. Hope you have some inspiration now to organize your own Ginko walk!
Member News
I absolutely love it when I see names I know pop up unexpectedly in my inbox. Here are a few that showed up in my inbox this week.
From Charlotte Digregorio’s Blog, we have this offering:
power lines
in a long row
the road to Rome
by Jerome Berglund (USA)
first appeared in the Asahi Haikuist Network, Jan. 6, 2023
Then, from the Daily Rattle, we have this beautiful rengay:
Michael Dylan Welch, C.R. Manley & Tanya McDonald
SOMETHING FISHY
a rengay written on a Washington State Ferry
salmon time—
the path to the creek
free of cobwebs
mdw
he warns us again—
don’t eat the pufferfish
crm
field trip—
the cold stare
of the passing shark
tm
the guppy circling
down the toilet
mdw
motionless angelfish—
still waiting
for my order
crm
one fish, two fish
I switch off her bedside lamp
tm
—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
Tribute to Collaboration
Michael Dylan Welch, C.R. Manley, & Tanya McDonald: “‘Something Fishy’ is a rengay we wrote mostly on the ferry between Edmonds and Kingston, Washington. Fish seemed like a natural theme to write about while we crossed the Puget Sound. Michael wrote the first rengay with Garry Gay, its inventor, in 1992, and has been promoting the form ever since, with essays and my website. Renku always links and shifts between the verses as it seeks to taste all of life, but rengay deliberately focuses on a single theme, which we had fun exploring in various fishy nuances.”
Sally Quon had acceptances from The Cicada’s Cry and Café Haiku. Both she and Michele Rule had haiku accepted in Literary Revelations – Petals of Haiku.
Sally’s Notebook
Some weeks are just quieter than others. I found myself reveling in some of the most amazing haiku written by other folks. One of the best ways to start writing good haiku is to spend time reading great haiku. This week I want to share a few of the things I’ve found on-line, starting with this offering by one of my favorite modern poets, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, who just returned from a trip to Puerto Rico.
Puerto Rico Haikuling Bouquet by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Whew! Makes my heart sing.
Here is a fantastic lesson I found on Troutswirl – The Haiku Foundation Blog
A stunning on-line journal out of Germany, Chrysanthemum.
And finally, The One Art 2024 Haiku Anthology
Upcoming Deadlines and Interesting Things
First of all, I’d like to apologize for the incorrect information in our last issue regarding submissions to Frameless Sky. A big thank you to one of our readers for pointing this out.
April 30 – Time Haiku
May 1 – Autumn Moon Haiku Journal
May 1 – San Francisco International Haibun Competition
May 7 – Whiptail Journal Hybrid Submissions
May 10 – Tsuri-Doro
May 15 – Mayfly Haiku
May is a big reading month at Poetry Pea. You can submit to:
- 1-15 May Single Object haiku & senryū
- 16-31 May haibun (there will be a print and PDF journal)
This Week’s Prompt
Of course, we hope that like us, you will be going out for a ginko today, and we would love to see the haiku you create from that experience. But in case you can’t get out today, here’s a little something to get your creative juices flowing.
This is a photo of the Arrow-Leafed Balsam Root, a flower currently gracing our hillsides in bright bouquets. If you don’t have any of these growing near you, send us your best dandelion haiku.
“Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.”
A. A. Milne
Michele Rule is a disabled writer from Kelowna BC. She is especially interested in the topics of chronic illness, relationships and nature. Michele is published in the Asahi Shimbun Haikuist, Pine Cone Review, the Enchanted Garden, Five Minute Lit, Shadow Pond, WordCityLit, and the anthologies F*ck the Patriarchy, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and To Live Here, among others. She is an associate member of the League of Canadian Poets and Haiku Canada. Michele has been awarded honourable mention twice for the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational and also for the Haiku Northwest Porad Award. Her first chapbook is Around the World in Fifteen Haiku. Michele lives in a beautiful garden surrounded by people who love her just the way she is.
Sally Quon is a disabled poet and photographer living in the Okanagan Valley of beautiful British Columbia, Canada. She is an associate member of The League of Canadian Poets and a member of Haiku Canada. Her work has been published in numerous journals including The Heron’s Nest, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, First Frost, and Time Haiku. She is currently working on her first book of haiku, haibun, and haiga, tentatively titled, “My Valley, My Home.”
Featherstone Creative
