summer

Star and Child: a #haiku 

Reading the prompt words for this week’s haiku challenge offered up by our friend Ronovan, child and star, I was immediately taken back in time, to a simpler time in my life: my childhood. 

laying on warm grass
gazing at stars far above
cloaked in childlike awe

I can remember warm, humid summer evenings spent exhausted, laying on the lawn, looking at the stars so far away but so bright. I remember thinking about how beautiful they were in the patterns we have “made up” for them. My dad was stationed on the USS Orion when he was on active duty so I could easily identify this constellation from a young ago. To this day I still find myself looking for Orion in the sky – and thinking about Dad. 

Even at that young age, pre-teen, I imagined how God might have hung them as is described in the account of the Creation in the first chapter of the book of Genesis. I  still do that, too. But these days I do it from the comfort of a chair (I’d never get myself up off the ground! LOL), often while sipping on my pipe. 

“Then God said, “Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them be signs to mark the seasons, days, and years. Let these lights in the sky shine down on the earth.” And that is what happened. God made two great lights—the larger one to govern the day, and the smaller one to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set these lights in the sky to light the earth,

And evening passed and morning came, marking the fourth day.”

‭‭Genesis‬ ‭1:14-17, 19‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Under: a haiku 

I should be well into dreamland by now; I’m exhausted. But I have these nasty things I not-so-affectionately call the night terrors: neuropathic pains left over as a result of the nerve damage I suffered years ago from CES. (If you look at my Maybe I Should’ve Started Here page you can learn more about all that.) As my nickname for them implies, they almost always strike at night, and come at completely random times. Often when they come I’m in such misery I can do nothing but writhe in pain. Occasionally they are mild enough to prevent me from sleeping but allow me to concentrate enough to read or, less often, write; usually what I can write while they torture me isn’t worth reading. But every now again I compose a piece that’s pretty good; this is one of those nights. 

Inspired by the prompt from Haiku Horizons this week, I thought about the not-so-subtle changing of the seasons this year which painted my mind with these images and then my screen in the words.  

blanket of leaves 

under blanket of
yellow orange and red leaves
lies end of summer 

Tan Renga Challenge 

This week’s Tan Renga Challenge starts with a haiku written by Yu Chang, a modern American haiku poet. Yu Chang was born in mainland China; grew up in Taiwan; and went to graduate schools in England and in the US. Since 1974 he has been a faculty member in the electrical engineering department at Union College in Schenectady, NY.

warm rain
the spring moon returns
to the rusty can

©Yu Chang


The goal of the Tan Renga Challenge is to compose the second (two-lined) stanza to make the Tan Renga complete. This is my attempt:

warm rain
the spring moon returns
to the rusty can

the children run pushing by
winner douses the losers

Heat Waves: a haiku 

Inspired by the CDHK prompt summer waves, I penned this haiku this morning. 

early July sun
blazing upon the asphalt
heat waves ripple up

This was to be in a traditional style, which I rather like. I (almost) always do the 5-7-5 rule but am just learning about many of the other things that go into a traditional haiku, like kigo (for more on traditional haiku see HERE as a start). I find it great fun to learn these new-to-me techniques as well as the “newer” more modern style and to incorporate them both into my writing n

Summer Morning: a haiku/haibun

I start out everyday with a routine, a rather boring one: take medicine, brew coffee, let the dogs out. Opening the door to let the “fur kids” into the fenced yard is the only variable, really, of the morning; I never know what the air outside is going to fee like, though I often have an idea. 

open door to find
typical summer morning
hazy hot humid

Linked to CDHK prompt “summer morning”.