Special Feature: Haiku and Tanka Selected for Earth Day

My Dear Readers/Friends:

Earth Day is a worldwide event that occurs annually on April 22. It "celebrates the environmental diversity of Earth and highlights the actions we can take to address environmental problems."

The Earth is what we all have in common.

-- Wendell Berry

the globe balanced

on the back of a turtle

Earth Day

Selected Haiku, 2017 Yamadera Basho Memorial Museum English Haiku Contest

                                                                          

Chen-ou Liu

FYI:This haiku alludes to the mythological idea of a World Turtle that supports the earth on its back.

I would like to share with you the following environmentally conscious haiku and tanka to improve our  awareness about environmental problems, spark new reflections on these five issues that Earth Day focuses on to preserve the environment: climate change, pollution, deforestation, water scarcity, and loss of biodiversity.

this world of reduction: 

of fingers lost to frostbite

of lives lost to depression ...

in the morning sunshine

another polar bear drifts off

PoemHunter, March 23 2022 

Chen-ou Liu

black oil slick

washed up on the beach -- 

looking

in the dead dolphin’s eye

I see a part of myself

Atlas Poetica, 33,July 2018

Lavana Kray

where forest was

the old map is thick

with dust

tinywords, January 10, 2014

LeRoy Gorman

dry season --

we haul echoes

from the well

Commendation, 2014 Klostar Ivanic International Haiku Contest

Carl Seguiban

I race the light 

into a Kansas sunset 

of corn and sky 

at the horizon 

I find only darkness

Modern English Tanka, 1:2, Winter 2006 

David Bacharach

One important question is left to each of us to answer: is Earth Day just another day of being an indifferent consumer? 

a giant slab of ice

shears off from Antarctica ...

in his SUV

the air becomes stuffier

after my Green New Deal talk

Chen-ou Liu

FYI: State of the Planet (the news site of the Columbia Climate School), December 16, 2020: How Buying Stuff Drives Climate Change

In fact, our consumer habits are actually driving climate change. A 2015 study found that the production and use of household goods and services was responsible for 60 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Not surprisingly, wealthy countries have the most per capita impact. A new U.N. report found that the richest one percent of the global population emit more than twice the amount than the poorest 50 percent; moreover, the wealthier people become, the more energy they use. A typical American’s yearly carbon emissions are five times that of the world’s average person. In 2009, U.S. consumers with more than $100,000 in yearly household income made up 22.3 percent of the population, yet produced almost one-third of all U.S. households’ total carbon emissions.

I would like to conclude today's Special Feature: Earth Day post on a positive note:

Away, away, from men and towns,

To the wild wood and the downs —

To the silent wilderness,

Where the soul need not repress its music.

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

forest stillness

a flickering

bird-song

Asahi Haikuist Network, September 20, 2013

Marshall Hryciuk

hiking alone

on this wooded trail

in dappled sunlight

I am lost but for

the hermit thrush's song

(written for Percy Bysshe Shelley)

Chen-ou Liu