Hello my family of poets! Toni here (kanzensakura, hayesspencer). So wonderful to join you all today for our Haibun Monday feature. We all have things that are part of our daily lives: our first cup of coffee or tea for the day, our underwear, our commute to work, reading the paper or listening to the news, not reading the paper or listening to the news, taking a walk or not, taking a shower, brushing our teeth, fixing dinner, coming home from work, listening to the evening news – so many everyday daily things most of us don’t think about.
Today, I challenge you to think about everyday occurrances and to write about them in a compact, haibun form. To make it easier on us, I am making this short and sweet: write a haibun of one paragraph with one haiku at the end. The haiku must be a haiku and not a 5-7-5 or micropoem. It must be 5-7-5 or short-long-short and must be about nature. That is probably the hardest part of this exercise today – write about an every day occurrence and then to at the end, write a haiku that ties the everyday things all together. For more information on haiku, you can read this post for dVerse: https://dversepoets.com/2015/11/16/japanese-poetry-forms-twins/
In spite of our routines, there is some element of nature. That is what the first haibun was all about. Matsuo Basho took a trip and among his daily wandering he wrote a bit of travelogue and ended with a haiku. This is from Basho’s Oku no Hosomichi translated by Hiroaki Sato in 1996. The haiku references the Festival of the Dolls (a Japanese kigo) and is in one straight line, typical of Japanese haiku, part of a continuing haiku. It is the first paragraph of his famous travelogue.
“The months and days are wayfarers of a hundred generations, and the years that come and go are also travelers. Those who float all their lives on a boat or reach their old age leading a horse by the bit make travel out of each day and inhabit travel. Many in the past also died while traveling. In which year it was I do not recall, but I, too, began to be lured by the wind like a fragmentary cloud and have since been unable to resist wanderlust, roaming out to the seashores. Last fall, I swept aside old cobwebs in my dilapidated hut in Fukagawa, and soon the year came to a close; as spring began and haze rose in the sky, I longed to walk beyond Shirakawa Barrier and, possessed and deranged by the distracting deity and enticed by the guardian deity of the road, I was unable to concentrate on anything. In the end I mended the rips in my pants, replaced hat strings, and, the moment I gave a moxa treatment to my kneecaps, I thought of the moon over Matsushima. I gave my living quarters to someone and moved into Sampû’s villa:
Kusa no to mo sumi-kawaru yo zo hina no ie
In my grass hut the residents change: now a doll’s house
I left the first eight links hung on a post of my hut.”
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dVerse 
Hello everyone! Hope you all are ready for the every day things of life!
HELLO! I hope you all are ready for the every day things of life.
Somehow the every day thing of life thing are the hardest thing to write… and then I thought about what people might think be the most out of ordinary in my every day life… love the prompt I look forward to read the haibun that will come in, over the next week or so.
I know. I was wondering, what to write about? So many things!
Always looking forward to these Monday prompt, Toni. I wrote a lot of fiction into my non-fictional experience. Looking forward to getting new insights into the ordinary.
I am too. It really is so interesting the everyday aspects of life and how we look at them.
And Victoria, you writing about folding laundry…there is something extremely zen about folding clean laundry and ironing. A lovely bit of fiction.
I’ve grown to love it. A lot of mine is fiction but the Zen part is not.
I know the Zen part is not fiction at all. I always make mine non-fiction because the original haibun was but that is just me. A good friend of mine writes amazing fiction and it always makes me pause because it is so….real.
Is haibun supposed to me non-fiction? I missed that somewhere along the line in my sloppy speed-reading.
Haibun were originally written as non-fiction but we have changed it all around just as we changed (and messed up) haiku. So I always write non-fiction except for one instance where we had a Van Gogh prompt. I think now it is a matter of taste. It is just people assume writing in first person is non-fiction and writing otherwise is fiction. I think your putting (fiction) b the title took care of any wonderings. Plus you write in second person which also took care of the fiction part.
Compulsive as I am, I did another–non-fiction. :0)
I appreciate the lessons from your Haibun sessions Toni ~ Thanks for the lovely prompt and I will be making my round in a bit ~
Happy Monday to all ~
Happy Monday back to you… here it doesn’t feel like Monday at all…
Thank you Grace!
So, quotidian comes from the Middle English: via Old French from Latin quotidianus, earlier cotidianus, from cotidie ‘daily’.
Holy cow. I LOVE this, so much:
“I, too, began to be lured by the wind like a fragmentary cloud”
Thank you for this, Toni. I am trying my hand at a piece now. No matter how it works out, I am incredibly blessed by that line.
He was quite a writer, wasn’t he?
I succumbed and wrote a second one.
Awww Victoria. But I know your life is interesting than your fiction. You didn’t need to but after reading, I am so very glad you did. It was splendid.
So enjoyed it…who knows, maybe a third. Mondays are my favorite poetry days now.
I tried my best to write a traditional haiku but I don’t know if I was successful. I enjoyed this prompt, though, as it gave me another opportunity to write about the lovely Lantana my husband and I’ve planted this past week.
Am I remembering correctly from my Iowa garden days — does Lantana have a lovely scent?
I hadn’t really smelled it before, but I just went out to check. It seems to depend on the color. The pink and yellow varieties do have a lovely scent, but the orange and darker red don’t seem to have much scent at all.
No but it has wonderful small brilliant colored flowers in bunches. Butterflies and hummingbirds love it because of the colors.
ooooh humming birds! Miss those in our cityscape.
Another reason I tell my hubs he is crazy for wanting to win the lottery and move to NYC….hummingbirds. Look up images of lantana on google….wonderful plants.
No scent, but they are a delight. So many colors. I love doing close up photos of them. Nature is good at complementary colors. My favs are yellow and purple (in one flower)
I haven’t seen the yellow and purple. I have yellow and pink, as well as various shades of yellow, orange, and red. I did find that the pale pink and yellow ones have a mild pleasant scent, but the others don’t have any.
You nailed the haiku Linda. Yes, you did!
Hai! There’s buns in the oven today 🙂 Couldn’t resist. Have been wanting to “say” that for many weeks.
Hello everyone! Well….the saying goes, there’s the devil in the details. I hope you do not get bored with the details in mine — but I’ve found this ritual to be liberating and focusing as well. I dumped the coffee machine — we went from a Mr. Coffee to a Cuisinart to a something else — pushing the buttons then running to do other things and then drinking black liquid on the run or as I was multitasking — and thus, forgetting that each day is a new one for which I am so grateful to enjoy. So — I am the slow motion coffee maker now — no percolating or electric cord — a slow process that I inhale and think about. So — I’ll be tipping my cup to all you dVerse folks in the AM — when I usually do my reading and writing — but shall meander a bit now for a preview! 🙂 I’m thinking many of you have far more interesting ordinaries in your day!
Mine is pretty ordinary, thank goodness. After years of working with engineers, reviewing them and licensing them (I’m an old retired engineer and yes, I say retired with much joy), I am happy for slow, calm, not very newsworthy days. My garden and husband keep me busy along with writing. I have a simple coffee maker because I am the only one who drinks it! My hubs would rather have iced water. So….Miss Lillian, it was a joy to read your haibun. and to sniff those buns in the oven as well.
I’ve found focus in coffee or tea-making, too! Or cocoa for that matter. I drink all 3 so have more opportunities for that ritual! 🙂
Hi folks. I love the haibun, and I had never heard of it before coming to dverse last year. I wrote a few of them and showed them to my husband and they were among his favourites.
I have a work in progress I think will work just fine for this prompt, if I can finish it today
The prompt is good for a week. AM looking forward to reading it.
It’s always a week 🙂 🙂
Yes it is! Thank goodness.
I’m checking out for a little bit and will be back later to read and comment and catch up.
Could not resist. Just added a second — much shorter! 🙂 I too had never heard of a haibun until I joined dVerse.
Couldn’t resist this one. In my previous life as a trainer, every day events were usually pretty boring. But not always.
Looking back, I should have written about breathing. But I chose weather instead. I never wrote a haibun before, so thanks for another first!
Hope you enjoy the exercise!
Excellent job. I looked for how to comment on your website but couldn’t find the comment section. You are right. Just about everything is up for debate but the weather is always the weather.
I really think this is a stimulating prompt–a great invitation to look at and write about an everyday thing in a new way. Thanks, Toni!
You are more than welcome!
Hi everyone! It’s good to be back at the Poets Pub, albeit the morning after. I returned to the rock and soul choir last night and enjoyed being able to sing again. We started two new songs, one an a capella version of ‘California Dreaming’, a song I love. I’ve flexed my poetic muscles this morning with a tanka and a poem inspired by prompts from WordPress and I’m raring to go! What an interesting prompt! I’m not sure where it will take me yet.
Being part of a chorus sounds like great fun. The harmony in California Dreaming is one of my favourites
Linked up, but my internet connection here has gone for a loop and sites are difficult to load. Will get round to commenting during the week though. Nice prompt. Enjoyed working on it.
how difficult something so seemingly everyday is as topic + haiku. Proved a real challenge but persevered. Stunned by the Basho travelogue – it’s that deceptive ease that we try to emulate! Thank you for this
Laura, for some reason your post is not open to comments… maybe it could be worth checking out… I would love to leave one.
thank you for the warning – a date glitch – remedied now I think!
Thank you for this lovely prompt. Not only did it prompt me to write something, but it also reminded me to pause and appreciate my daily routines. It’s good to be reminded to slow down sometimes. And good to be reminded of the technicalities of the haiku. I’m not sure I’ve quite got it, but there you go.
Late to rise — pouring my second cup and shall now meander reading about everyone’s daily happenings! 🙂
Little late to the party – hopefully not too late. I didn’t think I would come up with a poem for this prompt but I was able to come up with something.
I am glad you did. The prompt is up for the entire week.
Just added my haibun. I love this topic. It certainly was a challenge to merge the haiku with the everyday, but one I really enjoyed. Thanks so much Toni!
Will travel the haibun trail over the next few days. 🙂
Here I am at last. I like to take the time we have on these haibun prompts, to let mine develop slowly. 🙂 I did write on the everyday – specifically my morning routine. But to many of you, some parts of it might not seem everyday!