Thank you Lew for this evocative haiku. As with Marion, I had never heard of virga before and looking it up I was immediately transported by your poem. It shows how the selection of the perfect descriptive word can be so much more powerful than sentiment in making a poem affect us.
This poem also makes me reflect on another feature of our favourite poetry form – how Tinywords offers us all the opportunity to travel the world, to different times and seasons, through verse. Of course Basho when he popularized the modern form did so in the literary form he apparently invented – poetic travel journals, in which the verse was written to capture his aesthetic experience of the places he visited – often as part of a literary pilgrimage (inspired by his own poetic hero, Saigo, 5 centuries earlier).
This poem is likewise able to evoke for me a place where I have never been, and am unlikely ever to visit, but I can draw from these spare descriptive lines a sense of oppressive heat and the cruel poignancy of the place. (Though I would really have loved to have further enriched the experience with a few lines of haibun to enter into and share your own encounter prompting the work.)
September 22nd, 2014 at 11:13 am
Nice to see more alliteration coming into haiku.
summer solstice—
the glint of a buzzard’s wings
beneath the virga
—LEW WATTS
I also enjoyed other aspects of musicality with this non-minimalist haiku.
kind regards,
Alan
September 22nd, 2014 at 1:33 pm
I had not heard of a virga before and when I looked it up and saw a photo I immediately saw a buzzard flying beneath it. Wonderful!
September 22nd, 2014 at 8:58 pm
such a subtle way to immortalise an ephemery!
September 23rd, 2014 at 6:23 am
Thank you Lew for this evocative haiku. As with Marion, I had never heard of virga before and looking it up I was immediately transported by your poem. It shows how the selection of the perfect descriptive word can be so much more powerful than sentiment in making a poem affect us.
This poem also makes me reflect on another feature of our favourite poetry form – how Tinywords offers us all the opportunity to travel the world, to different times and seasons, through verse. Of course Basho when he popularized the modern form did so in the literary form he apparently invented – poetic travel journals, in which the verse was written to capture his aesthetic experience of the places he visited – often as part of a literary pilgrimage (inspired by his own poetic hero, Saigo, 5 centuries earlier).
This poem is likewise able to evoke for me a place where I have never been, and am unlikely ever to visit, but I can draw from these spare descriptive lines a sense of oppressive heat and the cruel poignancy of the place. (Though I would really have loved to have further enriched the experience with a few lines of haibun to enter into and share your own encounter prompting the work.)
Thank you so much for sharing this Lew.
Strider
September 24th, 2014 at 8:06 am
I also had to look-up "virga" and once I had, the image made me smile. Beautifully captured. :)