Last week’s Haiku Dialogue at the Haiku Foundation had a new guest editor, Deborah Karl-Brandt. She chose as her theme for the series, “Going For a Walk.” Her first prompt was rivers and clouds. About this, she wrote the following:
“The late Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh could see water in all its transformations. Water in the form of a cloud would soon become rain, a river, the sea, and it would help grow plants and trees. The trees would flourish and become paper on which the haijin would write their poetry, so that the cloud (water) would eventually be contained within the poetry itself. Nothing can exist by itself. Let’s take a walk together to follow the different paths of water and see where they will lead us.”
Deborah then published her long list, which included haiku poets from the following countries: Australia, India, Italy, Israel, Greece, Switzerland, Canada, Jordan, Wales, Poland, Nepal, Romania, Russia, Malta, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ireland, Kenya, Indonesia, Japan, China, Croatia, The Netherlands, United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It is truly a global community of poets with five of the seven continents represented at this time.
From more than four hundred haiku submitted to Deborah, this pedometer geek poet is thrilled to have had the following haiku selected for inclusion in the list:
canoeing
on the river
–her trailing fingers
~Nancy Brady, 2024
Thank you, Deborah, for choosing this haiku for the long list. I appreciate it and all the hard work you did reading the haiku submitted, selecting them for the list, and for all the comments you wrote about some of my fellow poets’ haiku. Volunteering to be a guest editor is not easy, nor is the job that Lori Zajkowski and Katherine Munro (K.J. Munro) do behind the scenes to keep the column running each week. They, too, are volunteers. Thanks, Kathy and Lori; your time and expertise is appreciated as well.
To read all the haiku on the long list, check out: https://thehaikufoundation.org/haiku-dialogue-going-for-a-walk-rivers-and-clouds-long-list/
To read all of the short list of haiku, upon which Deborah chose and commented, check out: https://thehaikufoundation.org/haiku-dialogue-going-for-a-walk-rivers-and-clouds-commentary/
In other haiku happenings, this pedometer geek poet had a haiku chosen for this month’s Cold Moon Journal, which is edited by Roberta Beach Jacobson. On June 12, my haiku was included with several other haiku poets. It is as follows:
spring evening
seeping through the window
the skunk’s scent
~Nancy Brady, 2024
Thanks, Robin, for selecting this haiku for your Cold Moon Journal. It is always a pleasure to be published alongside so many outstanding haiku poets from around the world. To read all the haiku on Cold Moon, check out the site: https://coldmoonjournal.blogspot.com/ Robin posts haiku every day so there is always some new haiku to read.
nbsmithblog...random digressions and musings 
Hi Nan, Congratulations on these! I totally understand “spring evening”. The skunk scent is a pretty common during that time.
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Thanks, Mark, for reading my post. Yes, that night was particularly “aromatic” as I could smell them despite the closed windows. Someone or something got sprayed that night. Recently I looked out my side door to discover two skunks in the grass by the porch (about 3 feet away). They looked at me while I looked at them and then they scurried off. Fortunately, the cat was not nearby and no one was sprayed. Despite living in an urban setting we are still close enough to the river and lake that we have seen skunks, opossums, and once a mink in our yard, ~Nan
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Love the ‘- her trailing fingers’. So evocative! Congratulations!
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Thanks, Govind. So kind of you to read and comment on my haiku. I appreciate it (and your kindness). ~Nan
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Such a nice picture of someone in say a canoe, slowly moving across a calm lake with her fingers playing in the wake of the canoe. Nicely done here, Nan.
Gotta say though, as a past victim, I could without the skunk scent.
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JC, it’s good to hear from you. Thanks for reading and commenting. Yeah, the one haiku is more positive than the other one. I’ve had to deal with dogs who frightened a skunk and paid the price. The house smelled like skunk for days. This particular incident must have happened to some other poor animal outside our house (and fortunately, it was not our cat) and the scent was strong enough to be smelled inside. While we live in the city, there are skunks around. Happy Father’s Day!
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Your first verse reminds me that I’d like to go kayaking again… and the second – well I think we all know what skunks purfume is! 😉
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So, go kayaking! We hope to (and soon). Yes, indeed, skunk perfume is strong; just ask Pepe LePew’s lady loves! Sometimes, it reminds me of the smell of coffee.
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I like coffee smell, – skunk does not remind me of coffee 🙂
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I do like the aroma of coffee, especially freshly ground beans, but I don’t drink it. I was about to say that I never have, but once, I gave it a go because it was served to me by my soon-to-be MIL. This was the first time we met and I didn’t want to be rude. I wasn’t impressed, but maybe had I added sugar and milk, I’d feel differently today. I will add a small amount of coffee (an ounce or two depending to the size) to convenience-store hot chocolate to cut the sweetness of hot chocolate, but for the most part I drink (hot) tea with sugar and milk as my daily drink.
It might be me but I do think that occasionally the scent of squished skunks smell like coffee. Call my weird!
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We all have different ways of remembering things. So weird is very objective 😉
In the been there done that depo; we’ve often eaten things we normally wouldn’t have just to not insult the hosts… So I know that routine. 🙂
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Yeah, in the eating-to-be-polite department, I’ve eaten somethings i probably wouldn’t otherwise. I remember my first sleepover with a friend. Mom told me to eat whatever the family served and I said i would despite being a picky eater. The first night my friend’s mom told me i didn’t have to eat anything i didn’t like, and then went on to say something like, “I know your mom probably told you otherwise.”
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I like a host that doesn’t make you eat what you don’t like! 😉
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I must have been a decent guest as I was invited back several times through the years, and I even visited her in the hospital one time when my mom was having knee replacement surgery. My friend’s mother was having her second one done coincidentally, and I stopped by to see her. She acted pleased to see me after all those many years.She told me to tell Mom to be vigilant in doing the post-surgery exercises because that would be extremely helpful.
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