The far easter corner of New York’s backyard rests under the 17 inches of snow that dropped last week. Single-digit windchill and overnight temperatures ensured that the snow remained. Cars parked along streets in the Bronx rest like glaciers, with snow up to their windows! If ever we needed a prediction of early spring, it’s this year! Frank Tassone, here, your host for today’s Haibun Monday, where we blend haiku and haibun. Today, let’s again celebrate this American, weather-predicting holiday: Groundhog Day!

As I noted last year, this is what Groundhog Day is all about:

What is Groundhog Day?

In the American tradition of Groundhog Day, the nation’s groundhog prognosticators take a stance on the season ahead. If the groundhog sees his shadow, he predicts six more weeks of winter. If he doesn’t, it’s a forecast of an early spring.

Groundhog Day’s roots are in the Christian holiday Candlemas, the midway point between the winter solstice and spring equinox. Candlemas was traditionally aligned with the anticipation of planting crops, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, and seeing sunshine on the day was said to indicate winter’s return.

In Europe, people traditionally looked to bears or badgers to look for the sign of returning winter or coming spring, but when German immigrants arrived in Pennsylvania, they instead used groundhogs to make the forecast instead.

The first official Groundhog Day took place on February 2, 1887, in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. The event took up permanent residence at Gobbler’s Knob the following year.

After the winter we’ve had, Punxsutawney Phil better get it right!

Of course, some poets have commemorated this unique holiday in their own way:

Shloka Shankar

tabula rasa

“You can stroke people with words.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

I don’t know if mine have ever emerged from the page to stroke the reader. Or given someone the feeling of a ten-second-extra-long-hug when they most needed it. Made them shake their head in agreement. Filled a void so deep, a void that could potentially house the ocean.

I’ve experienced the softness of nouns, the slipperiness of adjectives, and the hurriedness of verbs in my hypodermis. They string themselves together, combining and re-combining until I no longer feel like a blank page begging for a few drops of ink.  

rewriting
my phrase —
Groundhog Day

Courtesy of Contemporary Haibun Online (16.1, April 2020)

Groundhog Day

—For Mary

My friend asks me to write a poem for her birthday. It’s a big one, she tells me, noting that it gets more difficult to believe how far you’ve journeyed with each year’s passing. I get that, I tell her. Live in hope, die in despair, my mother used to say. Her family’s hardscrabble struggle for a life worth living punctuated by Red Dirt memories: my mother’s sharp laugh; the slight shrug of her shoulders; the sun; the earth; the clouds. As if she were just saying, Well, I’m still here. As if, one way or another, we all still are.

Candlemas—
shadows and light cast
into the world

Courtesy of MacQueen’s Quinterly: Knock-your-socks-off Art and Literature, Issue 28, April 2025

Ready to root for Team Rodent? Let’s celebrate their effort either way. Write your haibun alluding to Groundhog Day.

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 alluding to Groundhog Day.
• 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!