Monday, May 13, 2024

Butterfly Dream: Inchworm Haiku by Kirsty Karkow

English Original

inchworm
on a fiddlehead fern 
robin's shadow

Haiku Cycles, April 2001

Kirsty Karkow


Chinese Translation (Traditional)

尺蠖
在一片蕨菜葉上
知更鳥的影子

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

尺蠖
在一片蕨菜叶上
知更鸟的影子


Bio Sketch

Kirsty Karkow lived in Waldoboro, Maine, where she wrote haiku, sijo, tanka, and other short forms. Lyrical, poignant, and spare, her poetry reflected a rich and deep sense of place and spirit. Her haiku have won the Mainichi and the R.H Blyth Award and placed in other contests. And she had two best-selling books in print: water poems: haiku, tanka and sijo and shorelines: haiku, haibun and tanka , published by Black Cat Press.

1 comment:

  1. This shaesei (sketch from life), infused with evocative and concrete imagery, shows one good example of the food chain cycle of life (fiddlehead fern in L2 and robin in L3) and death (inchworm in L1 dead in a few moments) in nature through the effective use of a pivotal line, L2.

    The haiku reminds me of one of my own about this same topic:

    grasshopper guts
    the belly of a cicada --
    sparrow crouching behind

    A Handful of Stones, March, 27, 2010

    ReplyDelete