On Sunday October 25, 2020, six of us attended another Zoom meeting: Julia Wakefield, Steve Wigg, Maeve Archibald, Stella Damarjati Lynette Arden and Beverley George. This time we attempted a sequence based on the two prompts supplied by Beverley George: SECLUSION and GARDENS. Beverley did not take part in the sequence, but she was happy to contribute her comments.
Some of us found the former topic quite challenging at first, but as we worked on the sequence we found we were able to incorporate quite a few of the garden haiku into what began as a seclusion sequence. We all agreed to share the final sequence online, so here it is:
Threads of Gold
cold and quiet
this early morning
threads of gold MA
lifted from the earth
the pale-yellow sun
of a native orchid SW
a black moth
plays hide and seek
in a white lily MA
within the weeds
a tiny begonia
almost lost MA
footpath garden
among the agapanthus
a dwarf peach sets fruit LA
straining
to peck at nasturtiums
porcelain rooster SW
‘no trespassing’
but a dandelion flowers
among the roses LA
through blinding sunshine
butterflies
pinpoint the path JW
sequestered
in marauding creepers
the scent of jasmine JW
afternoon sun
the brief melody
of a blackbird’s song SD
riverside bench
the sound of water rushing
over the weir SD
Working together on a sequence of this nature provoked us to think deeply about what we notice as individuals when we walk through a garden. We found ourselves wandering through both time and space, from the quiet secrets of an early morning to a cacophony of sound in the late afternoon. We remarked on the fact that many of our haiku focused on the mingling of the senses, e.g. when a perfume ‘scents’ an image, or the song of a blackbird adds colour to the sunlight.
Following on from this sharing of perspectives, and inspired by the Haiku@ the Oaks report https://australianhaikusociety.org/2020/10/15/haiku-the-oaks-canberra-21/, I suggested that next time we each try composing some haiku prompted by 4 or 5 concrete nouns, as demonstrated in Hansha Teki’s Bipedal Verses https://heliosparrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/Bipedal_Verses-Hansha_Teki.pdf so we could compare our different responses to each prompt. Whether we can attempt the ‘parallel verse’ approach will be a matter for speculation.
We will see what develops from this at our next meeting on Saturday, November 29.
Julia Wakefield
Australian Haiku Society 