divinely common

Carpe Diem Haiku Writing Techniques #23 finding the divine in the common

Our host's inspirational text in part:

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new episode of CDHWT. This week I have chosen a nice HWT in which we will explore one of the basic rules of haiku, a deeper spiritual meaning. This episode is titled "finding the divine in the common". In this episode Jane and I are taking you (again) by the hand to improve your haiku writing skills.

This is a technique that seems to happen without conscious control. A writer will make a perfectly ordinary and accurate statement about common things, but due to the combination of images and ideas about them, or between them, a truth will b revealed about the divine. Since we all have various ideas about  what the divine is, two readers of the same haiku may not find the same truth or revelation in it. Here, again, the reader becomes a writer to find a greater truth behind the words. This example from Basho's work may seem fairly clear:

the one thing
that lights my world
a rice gourd

© Basho (Tr. Jane Reichhold)

Perhaps it helps to know that rice was stored in a dried gourd. To keep it away from mice, the gourd was hung from a rafter. Though this was the time before electricity and light bulbs, Basho already had this comparison. Yet there is also a deeper meaning. The rice gourd's golden yellow color not only brightened the dim room, but the rice in it furnished the energy to maintain his body while endeavoring to reach the goal of enlightenment. One can also see this poem as a riddle: "What is the one thing that lights my world?"

My take on the post:

sitting - askew

a battered tin can

world weary

©  petra domina

I do hope you will share in a comment what these words painted to inspire you to 'write'.

Thanks to Chèvrefeuille for daily prompts on 

CARPE DIEM HAIKU KAI