Our host, Chèvrefeuille, at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai,  published the two winners of the Autumn Kukai last week. I have to say the winners’ masterpieces truly inspired me today. I find haiku is like an abstract painting. The artist knows what he or she is seeing and feeling at that very moment. The reader is like the admirer of the artist’s work, seeing and feeling the words painted on the canvas.
Both haiku inspired me to write. I could not help but see myself in the moment of each ku. Starting with the runner up, Sara McNulty who is a gifted poetess writing waka as well as other forms. I find her poems make you stop…and think.

steaming gold
on chilled October evening
mug of hot cider

© Sara McNulty

Such a lovely and colourful image I see and remember coming home from school shuffling through falling leaves. The crisp air a sign of the season and walking into GrandMaman’s kitchen…

harvest scents
eventide
spiced with her love

©Tournesol’17/02/05

I’m reminded of November, where November 1st, All Saints’ Day seems to set the stage. Where saints are remembered and their ghosts hover over cemeteries and barren parks. Where naked trees have shed their colours and long bare arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross, weighs on our hearts. November days, damp and cold has not seen the first snow yet to soften the blow of endings.
tearful skies
November rains
say goodbye

And now, the winner’s haiku, Hamish Gunn who is a published author, storyteller and poet, writes a haiku that speaks to me. Yesterday, I wrote an entry in my personal journal on another blog and “letting go” seems to be a sign the universe is telling me in so many ways.

we learn
from autumn
to let go

© Hamish Gunn

What a thoughtful ku that any reader of any age can relate to in so many ways, starting with …

letting go
autumn leaves
summer love

©Tournesol’17/02/05

Any parent knows the feeling the first day you bring your child to daycare or school…that first day, that moment you see your child walk into a new setting without you and you still remember what you felt.

chubby little hand
a world away from home
lets go

©Tournesol’17/02/05

Of course at any stage of their lives, you remember those moments. I remember the first day my first-born went to nursery school, the first day at Kindergarten; and then my youngest at fifteen months, going to daycare for a few hours with her brother, wailing, clinging to my breast. Her brother watching over her like a big brother feeling her sorrow tries to make her smile.

tiny tot clings
mysteries of the unknown
pleading eyes well
mother’s reassuring smile
gently lets go

©Tournesol’17/02/05

I could go on and on with so many life cycles with those three perfect lines, we learn/from autumn/ letting go but I will end with my mother’s passing in late autumn, on December 2nd, 2014. Typically, in Québec, we consider December winter but officially it is not until December 22nd, the shortest day of the year. So here I share a series of haiku in a form created by our host, Chèvrefeuille, called a Troiku.

mother’s last lesson
listen to leaves falling
in autumn

mother’s last lesson
teaching me
letting go

listen to leaves falling
return one last time
to Mother Earth

in autumn
one last
goodbye

©Tournesol’17/02/05

Daily moments inspired by Hamish and Sara at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai

Lessons on Letting Go – Troibun Febuary 5, 2017