For Earth Day Reflections
spring day mural:
green paint sprayed across the wall
behind leafless trees
NeverEnding Story, March 21, 2024
Chen-ou Liu
Commentary: The two parts of this "spring day mural/L1" haiku offers at least two contrasts, visual and symbolic (artistic/man-made: "replication of the absent leaves" of trees in L 2 vs natural/diseased or dying/dead in L3; And "spring day" in L1 vs "leafless trees" in L3) and one environmentally significant and emotionally poignant question: why these trees, a synecdoche used to refer to Nature, leafless during springtime, i.e. lifeless.
This ekphrastic haiku is stimulated by street artist Banksy's latest work of art, a mural featuring green paint behind a tree and a person holding a hose, and through describing and reflecting on this piece of art, the haiku amplifies and expands the meaning/significance of Banksy's work.
FYI: USA Today, March 18, 2024: New artwork from street artist Banksy spotted in London features environmental message
And for more examples about ekphrastic poems, see To the Lighthouse: Ekphrastic Senryu and To the Lighthouse: Ekphrastic Tanka
An Earth Day haiku written in response to the climate summit held in Ottawa, Canada to create a "legally-binding plastic pollution instrument through the United Nations."
ReplyDeleteentrance to UN's summit
row upon row of towers
of plastic bottles
“We won’t ban our way out of plastic pollution, we won’t recycle our way out of plastic pollution, and we won’t reuse our way out of plastic pollution. We need to do a better job of all these things at different steps and different types of plastics,” Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault said at the conference Tuesday.
-- Global News, April 23: What UN plastic waste treaty talks in Ottawa want: ‘Won’t recycle our way out,’ accessed at https://globalnews.ca/news/10444656/un-plastic-pollution-treaty-ottawa/
Another haiku for Earth Day, 2024:
DeleteEarth Day
this childhood river now a stream
going nowhere