The Daily Read

The Haiku of Issa…

… an interesting set of poems today…

… a cricket chirps in the belly of a scarecrow…

… crickets are symbols of fall in Japanese haiku… in the west, they are symbols of summer…

… scarecrows in Japanese mythology (Kuebiko) are wise creatures and is one of three knowledge deities…

… taken together, a cricket in the scarecrow’s belly might be seen as suggesting the autumn phase of human aging, there being wisdom associated with approaching old age…

… another talks about the face of a spring moon 12 years old… the 12 years old part is the dead giveaway to me that the poet speaks of a girl on the cusp of menstruation, becoming an woman…

… another speaks of a woman washing the dishes by moonlight in the shallows of a river…

… this seems a multiple reference to feminine fluidity, the moon being a complex symbol of fluidity in Japanese culture… the river being a direct symbol of flowing time, the woman washing the dishes… the dishes themselves being concrete items that around which all this fluidity revolves… everything is feminine here… evocative of intuitive understandings… evocative of inner knowledge… wow, what a beautiful poem!…

Washing the saucepans—

the moon glows on her hands

in the shallow river.

… i am going to have to continue looking into this last one… there seems to be so much to it…