Almost a year ago, I wrote, “The vibrant colors of Autumn and Spring are a delight to behold, are they not?” I stand by that view today. Frank Tassone, here, & I’m delighted to host another Haibun Monday, where we blend haiku and prose poetry into that unique form known as haibun! Today, let’s reexperience the seasonal kaleidoscope North and South of the Equator. Let’s talk about Fall foliage or Spring blossoms!

Mira and I visited Saranac Lake, NY, just past Lake Placid, in the Adirondack Mountains. We hiked serpentine trails through arrays of orange, yellow, and red. Everywhere we looked, the beauty of foliage enveloped us! This past weekend, I notice that the local leaves have begun to turn, too.

As I still have not visited anywhere south of the Equator, I can only imagine the delight of Spring blossoming that may occur there.

Again, as I observed last year, “In either hemisphere, there is a feast of colors to observe and savor.”

Certainly, some poets have done just that:

Three Dimensions

Man Ray

Several small houses

Discreetly separated by foliage

And the night—

Maintaining their several identities

By light

Which fills the inside of each—

Not as masses they stand

But as walls

Enclosing and excluding

Like shawls

About little old women—

What mystery hides within

What curiosity lurks without

One the other

Knows nothing about.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on January 27, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.

Sonnet—Baugmaree

Toru Dutt

A sea of foliage girds our garden round,
        But not a sea of dull unvaried green,
        Sharp contrasts of all colours here are seen;
The light-green graceful tamarinds abound
Amid the mangoe clumps of green profound,
        And palms arise, like pillars gray, between;
        And o’er the quiet pools the seemuls lean,
Red,—red, and startling like a trumpet’s sound.
But nothing can be lovelier than the ranges
        Of bamboos to the eastward, when the moon
Looks through their gaps, and the white lotus changes
        Into a cup of silver. One might swoon
               Drunken with beauty then, or gaze and gaze
               On a primeval Eden, in amaze.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on May 29, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

for an instant

eyes of the blossoms open fully

close again in the wind

Kristen Deming, 39 Blossoms, courtesy of the Haiku Foundation

Satisfy your thirst for seasonal color! Write a haibun that alludes to either Fall foliage or Spring blossoms.

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 Fall foliage or Spring blossoms.
• 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!