Butterfly Dream: Night Wind Chime Haiku by Fay Aoyagi

English Original

seeing her off

to the Milky Way

a night wind chime

Frogpond, 48:1, Winter 2025

Fay Aoyagi

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

向她送別

去銀河系

夜晚的風鈴

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

向她送别

去银河系

夜晚的风铃

 

Bio Sketch

Fay Aoyagi （青柳飛）was born in Tokyo and immigrated to the U.S. in 1982. She is currently a member of Haiku Society of America and Haiku Poets of Northern California. She serves as an associate editor of The Heron's Nest.  She also writes in Japanese and belongs to two Japanese haiku groups; Ten'I (天為) and "Aki"（秋), and  she is a member of Haijin Kyokai (俳人協会).

Butterfly Dream: Sleeping Towns Haiku by Deborah P Kolodji

English Original

highway

of sleeping towns

the milky way

Highway of Sleeping Towns, 2016

Deborah P Kolodji 

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

高速公路

沿線的沉睡城鎮

銀河

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

高速公路

沿线的沉睡城镇

银河

Bio Sketch

Deborah P Kolodji was the California Regional Coordinator for the Haiku Society of America and moderated the Southern California Haiku Study Group. Her first full length book of haiku, highway of sleeping towns, is available from Shabda Press.

Butterfly Dream: Winter Stars Haiku by Peggy Willis Lyles

English Original

he comes to bed

clean-shaven ...

winter stars

Where Rain Would Stay , 2022

Peggy Willis Lyles

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

他上床睡覺

把鬍子刮得乾乾淨淨的 ...

冬日星辰

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

他上床睡觉

把胡子刮得干干净净的 ...

冬日星辰

Bio Sketch

Peggy Willis Lyles was born in Summerville, South Carolina, on September 17, 1939. She died in Tucker, Georgia on September 3, 2010. A former English professor, she was a leading haiku writer for over 30 years -- helping bring many readers and writers into the haiku community.

Butterfly Dream: Cliff's Edge Haiku by Chuck Brickley

English Original

a car 

at the cliff's edge

the Milky Way

Earthshine, 2017

Chuck Brickley

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

一輛車

停在懸崖邊

銀河系

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

一辆车

停在悬崖边

银河系

Bio Sketch

A native San Franciscan, Chuck Brickley lived in rural British Columbia for 35 years. His book of haiku, earthshine, won the THF Touchstone Award for Distinguished Books 2017; the HSA Merit Book Award 2017, Honorable Mention; and the inaugural Marianne Bluger Book Award 2020, Honourable Mention. His haibun,“Is Where The Car Is," was nominated for a Pushcart Prize 2018, and another haibun, "A Banishing," received a Sonders Best Small Fiction Award nomination, 2019

One Man's Maple Moon: In Quiet Tanka by Robert D. Wilson

English Original

moored in quiet, 

i stare past the stars 

into a morning 

borrowed 

from your smile 

Fire Pearls: Short Masterpieces of the Human Heart, 2006

Robert D. Wilson

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

靜止不動,

我凝視夜空的星星

直到一個早晨

那是從你的微笑

借來的時間

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

静止不动,

我凝视夜空的星星

直到一个早晨

那是从你的微笑

借来的时间

Bio Sketch

Robert D. Wilson is Co-Owner of Simply Haiku.

Poetic Musings: Milky Way Haiku by Chen-ou Liu

Milky Way…

bit by bit I  put myself

out of my mind

Haiku News, July, 18, 2010

Chen-ou Liu

Commentary by Jack Galmitz: A first rate haiku. The contrast between the hugeness of the Milky Way and the “bits” that compose our idea of self is well-illustrated. And, I like the gradual loss of self as it contemplates what is itself and beyond itself.

Poetic Musings: Freight Train Haiku by Mark Miller

freight train running through the valley the Milky Way

Frogpond, Spring 2018

Mark Miller

Commentary: Enhanced by the quick pace of its one-line format, this haiku is highly cinematic, reading like/working well as a poetic rendering of an establishing shot of a summer night train scene. Its unexpected yet visually evocative and symbolically rich ending, the "milky way/river of stars," strengthens its emotionally suggestive power.

And it might be interesting to do a thematic comparison reading of the following haiku:

the remote blast

of a freight train horn

winter solitude

Presence, 54, February 2016

Olivier Schopfer

A Room of My Own: Chemical Queen Tanka

darkness between the stars

this sultry night my roommate

vanishes again

into the hive of drug addicts

to serve his chemical queen

Added:

smell of summer heat

shards of glass and syringes

around the dumpster

Added:

the cardboard box

in a high-rise shadow

bread crumbs

Added: Against the Drowning Noise of Other Words, LXXXIII: "thousand-yard stare"

her thousand-yard stare ...

a young woman hugs a doll

dripping blood

FYI: "The thousand-yard stare or two-thousand-yard stare is a military phrase coined to describe the limp, unfocused gaze of a battle-weary soldier, but the symptom it describes may also be found among victims of other types of trauma."

Added:

a growth of moss

on the high fence between me

and my neighbor ...

could anything change

if I apologized first

FYI: This could be read as a sequel to my tanka below:

my morning glories

climb her white fence ...

between us

in the backyard

there's a new divide

Haiku Canada Review, 11:2, 2017 

Butterfly Dream: Astro Lab Haiku by Srinivasa Rao Sambangi

English Original

astro lab

a boy stretches himself

to the stars

Prune Juice, March, 2019

Srinivasa Rao Sambangi

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

天文實驗室

一個男孩伸手

指向群星

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

天文实验室

一个男孩伸手

指向群星

Bio Sketch

Srinivasa Rao Sambangi, a Master Black Belt in Six Sigma, is currently working in a pharma company in Hyderabad, India. His haiku are regularly published in all the leading haiku journals

Butterfly Dream: Glass Shard Haiku by Robert D. Wilson

English Original

sultry night ...

a glass shard blinks

at the stars

Ambrosia, 5, Winter 2010

Robert D. Wilson

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

悶熱的夜晚 ...

玻璃碎片對著星星

閃爍不定

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

闷热的夜晚 ...

玻璃碎片对着星星

闪烁不定

Bio Sketch

Robert D. Wilson is Co-Owner of Simply Haiku.

One Man's Maple Moon: Opium Stars Tanka by Pamela A. Babusci

English Original

sitting alone

beneath

opium stars

a woman

in deep pain

The Linda Jeannette Ward Tanka Award,  The British Haiku Society Awards, 2023

Pamela A. Babusci

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

獨自坐在

滿天鴉片星辰

之下

一個女人

深深地哀痛

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

独自坐在

满天鸦片星辰

之下

一个女人

深深地哀痛

 

Bio Sketch

Pamela A. Babusci  is an internationally award winning haiku, tanka poet and haiga artist. Some of her awards include: Museum of Haiku Literature Award, International Tanka Splendor Awards, First Place Yellow Moon Competition (Aust) tanka category,  First Place Kokako Tanka Competition,(NZ) First Place Saigyo Tanka Awards (US), Basho Festival Haiku Contests (Japan).  Pamela has illustrated several books, including: Full Moon Tide: The Best of Tanka Splendor Awards, Taboo Haiku, Chasing the Sun, Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka, and A Thousand Reasons 2009. Pamela was the founder and now is the solo Editor of Moonbathing: a journal of women’s tanka; the first all women’s tanka journal in the US.

Poetic Musings: Wild Sea Haiku by Basho

Japanese Original

araumi | ya | Sado | ni | yokotau | amanogawa

wild-sea | - | Sado | to | lay | River-of-Heaven (the Milky Way)

English Translation

a wild sea --

stretching to Sado Isle

the Milky Way

Basho

Comment: This haiku is framed by the natural landscape, a "wild sea" (L1) and the "Milky Way" (L3) through Basho's effective use of inversion (in both the Japanese original and the English translation). Sado Isle, functioning as utamakura (poetic place name) known for its long history of political exiles, surrounded by a wild sea and lying under the Milky Way, comes to "embody the feeling of loneliness, both of the exiles at Sado and of the poet himself. The poem has a majestic, slow-moving rhythm, especially the drawn-out "o" sounds in the middle line (Sado ni yokotau), which suggests the vastness and scale of the landscape" (Haruo Shirane, Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Basho, pp. 242-3)

FYI: For more about utamakura, see To the Lighthouse: A Rhetorical Device, Utamakura (Poetic Place Names)

Butterfly Dream: Freight Train Haiku by Mark Miller

English Original

freight train running through the valley the Milky Way

Frogpond, Spring 2018

Mark Miller

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

貨運列車穿過銀河山谷

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

货运列车穿过银河山谷

Bio Sketch

Mark Miller is an award-winning poet who has published over 300 haiku in international journals and anthologies, including Presence, Shamrock, Acorn, Frogpond, Akitsu Quarterly,The Heron’s Nest, Under the Basho and Windfall: Australian Haiku. He lives on the south coast of New South Wales, Australia.

One Man's Maple Moon: Cabin Fever Tanka by Robert D. Wilson

English Original

cabin fever ...

bored out of my mind,

i pluck stars

from the sky and

eat them ... one by one

Modern English Tanka, 1:2, Winter 2006

Robert D. Wilson

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

幽居病 ...

無聊讓我心煩意亂

我從夜空中

摘下星星

一顆又一顆 ... 吃掉它們

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

幽居病 ...

无聊让我心烦意乱

我从夜空中

摘下星星

一颗又一颗 ... 吃掉它们

Bio Sketch

Robert D. Wilson is Co-Owner of Simply Haiku.

One Man's Maple Moon: Milky Night Tanka by Jun Fujita

English Original

Milky night; 

Through slender trees in drowse

A petal --

Falling. 

Tanka: Poems in Exile, 1923

Jun Fujita

Chinese Translation (Traditional)

銀河之夜; 

在困乏中穿過細長的樹林

一片花瓣 --

墜落。

Chinese Translation (Simplified)

银河之夜; 

在困乏中穿过细长的树林

一片花瓣 --

坠落。

Bio Sketch

Jun Fujita (1888-1963) was born in a village near Hiroshima, Japan, and immigrated to Canada as a teenager. By 1915, he was in Chicago, where he worked for the Evening Post, known as the first Japanese-American photo-journalist. He was also an accomplished poet,  arguably the first master of tanka poetry in English. He certainly was a master of the rhetoric of omission or, as he put it, "that fine and illusive mood, big enough to illuminate the infinity of the universe," which is a defining characteristic of tanka. And his Tanka: Poems in Exile, first English language collection of tanka, was published in 1923. The flip-flop ebook version can be found here.

A Room of My Own: That's It

Canada Day

through wildfire smoke

the squawk of gulls

fireworks over ...

the distance between stars

and our silence 

FYI: CNBC, Climate, June 30: Four North American cities now near worst air quality in the world

Key Points:

1 New York; Washington, D.C.; Montreal; and Toronto have some of the worst air quality in the world, according to an AQI tracking service.

2 Canadian wildfires have sent smoky air around much of North America over the last few weeks.

3 The effect of the wildfires has been significantly worsened by climate change, researchers have found.

Added: reading between the lives and writing between the lines, LXX

firework-lit sky

my veteran friend sleeps 

with a gun

Added: reading between the lives and writing between the lines, LXXI

our football team

lines up for O' Canada

in the center

a Black player looks up

at the sky, endless blue

Added: This Brave New World, XCII

a rowdy white man

held face down on the airport floor

by policemen

he screams, you’re treating me

like a fucking black person

A Room of My Own: Life of Shooting Stars Tanka

my marriage:

a roof with the skylight 

propped by four walls

dulls my yearning

for a life of shooting stars

Added:

brave new world, space tourism ...

with gray hair to his waist

and his face blotchy 

a man with a cart full of cans

stares into the ink-dark sky

FYI: Wion, March 2023: The Indian space research organisation (ISRO) is planning to begin space tourism by 2030. A single ticket is expected to cost a little over $725,000. And The Economic Times, Oct. 18, 2022: The incidence of poverty in India dropped from 55.1% in 2005-06 to 16.4% in 2019-21.

Added:

a raven

crowing from one roof

to another ...

no answer for my future self

just a ghostly past