Good afternoon, poets! Welcome to an early Autumn (or Spring) edition of Haibun Monday! Frank Tassone, here, ready to commemorate with you another seasonal event: the Equinox!

Happening twice each year, the Equinox marks the time when daylight and darkness share equal time. Depending on which side of the Equator you reside, that means the increasing light of Spring, or the waxing darkness of Autumn:

A solar equinox is a moment in time when the Sun crosses the Earth’s equator, which is to say, appears directly above the equator, rather than north or south of the equator. On the day of the equinox, the Sun appears to rise “due east” and set “due west”. This occurs twice each year, around 20 March and 23 September.^[a]

More precisely, an equinox is traditionally defined as the time when the plane of Earth‘s equator passes through the geometric center of the Sun‘s disk.^[7][8] Equivalently, this is the moment when Earth’s rotation axis is directly perpendicular to the Sun-Earth line, tilting neither toward nor away from the Sun. In modern times^[when?], since the Moon (and to a lesser extent the planets) causes Earth’s orbit to vary slightly from a perfect ellipse, the equinox is officially defined by the Sun’s more regular ecliptic longitude rather than by its declination. The instants of the equinoxes are currently defined to be when the apparent geocentric longitude of the Sun is 0° and 180°.^[9]

The word is derived from the Latin aequinoctium, from aequus (equal) and nox (genitive noctis, plural noctium) (of the equal nights). On the day of an equinox, daytime and nighttime are of approximately equal duration all over the planet.

Whether north or south of the Equator, the Equinox marks the departure of one season for another. It’s Either Canola Flowers blossoms or apple picking. & either summer or winter wait in the wings.

Meanwhile, some haijin find the Equinox compelling:

Equinox Ants Again

Back home for a long overdue visit. A drone of tilling tractors off in the distance. At my feet, out of the fecund earth a queue of dancing dots along and across the sidewalk. They carry a glimpse of something half-remembered. I was young. Maybe ten. Naïve. There was a magnifying glass. Lessons from an older boy who lived down the road. How to harness and direct sunbeams. Then scalded exoskeletons. Workers and soldiers smoldering. Expired. His sinister smile. And my own.

faint young sun paradox of childhood

Karma, it is taught, is infallible. An inescapable physics weaving space-time with cause-effect and energy-matter. Some continuity of this curiosity called consciousness. So, these days living far from those rolling fields within the emerald folds of a tropical island, spring is eternal. I wake to their fiery bites. Shoo them from the tub before I bathe. Prepare food among their patrols. A good bit older now and tutored by the Dharma, I gaze at them from above. Smile a different smile.

breakfast offering a bit more to the ants

Matthew Caretti, Drifting Sands, July 31, 2023

En Plein Air- an Ekphrastic Haibun

​The morning chill steeps into my tea, hands cupping the bowl slowly start to warm, but my toes are still freezing. In this predawn quiet along with the muzzein’s litany I hear a crow call, then another and still another while an all enveloping opalescent mist rises beyond the widow makers.

In the harvested field I see a haystack with its belly open, excavated, hollow.

I am reminded of the 25 canvases of ‘Haystacks’ painted by Claude Monet in Giverny to show the difference of light in various seasons. The one that attracts me most is “Wheatstacks (End of Summer).” It was one of the paintings discussed by the docent on our free Seniors Art Tour Day at the Art Institute of Chicago. Monet’s genius with the subtle colours displayed there are the same as those I now see in India.

Then Van Gogh’s last painting “Wheat Fields with Crows,” also painted in 1890, comes to mind and a deep desolation engulfs me.  I look at the dark lowering sky with crows over a wind-whipped wheat field. I wonder what angst drove him to shoot himself that day.

It is time for the Shradh to begin. For the next two weeks we will fast, pray and give offerings to the Brahmins, birds and animals in their name, seek blessings from our ancient ones. This year, I will add Monet and Van Gogh to my list of souls.

autumn equinox –
above the lightening
the last koel’s song

Angelee Deodhar, The Ekphrastic Review, January 18, 2017

Diachrony Anglo versus antipodal. GMT / PST. Almost-not-quite the International Date Line. But she remains ahead. London slumbering while I teach. Springtide studying while I stumble into the autumnal equinox. Each day exchanging a half-life of this loneliness. meridian lines the dissonance in our slang

by Matthew Caretti, Modern Haiku, 53.3, Autumn 2022

Today, let’s embrace the day and the night. Let’s write haibun that include or reference the Equinox.

New to haibun? The form consists of one to a few paragraphs of prose—usually written in the present tense—that evoke an experience and are often non-fictional/autobiographical. They may be preceded or followed by one or more haiku—nature-based, using a seasonal image—that complement without directly repeating what the prose stated.

New to dVerse? Here is what you do:

• Write a haibun that alludes to the Equinox.
• Post it on your personal site/blog.
• Include a link back to dVerse in your post.
• Copy your link onto the Mr. Linky.
• Remember to click the small checkbox about data protection.
• Read and comment on some of your fellow poets’ work.
• Like and leave a comment below if you choose to do so.
• Have fun!