End of the year --
this freezing snow
fell in love to me?



Happy New Year!

I read my calendar and found that:

       eight minutes 
       longer day today --
       this dwindling year

21st Dec Sun from 9:22 to 15:14
29th Dec Sun from 9:23 to 15:21

This is here in Turku, 60 Degrees North, in Utsjoki (70 Degs North) not any sun at all.

Ice-lantern # 2

 
the day after Christmas -- 
pretty new snowflakes 
just born

inside 
ice-lanterns 
candles flicker

Merry and warm Christmas!

Not whistling,
suspicious bird,
just looking

A Happy Christmas for you!

winter solstice --
a dog barks at
the bright sky

       new snow 
       on the old one ...
       the sky's breath

One of my favorite lines in Ogura Hyakunin Isshu:
Poem Nr 15 L5: yuki wa furitsutsutsu. The whole waka (=tanka):

As I gather herbs
From this field in early spring,
Intending them for you,
The falling snow starts to gather
On the sleeve of my outstretched arm.

-- Emperor Kōkō

Also Ogura Poem Nr 4:
Yamabe no Akahito's waka in 'Turku-area-language'

In English:

As I venture out
Onto the shore at Tago Bay,
I see snow, pure white,
Falling now ever deeper
On Mount Fuji's lofty peak.

-- Yamabe no Akahito

English translations' copyright by

http://www.jlit.net/authors_works/premodern/hyakunin_isshu/poems_01-05.html#top

snowing
large flakes
as nothing else
to do


(Mr. Santoka wrote many two-liners, also as well as some four liners!)

Snoring # 3

December night
or this cloudy day --
snoring sun

shoveling snows --
an unfinished snowman
arguing

Snoring #2

Reading
Takuboku's poems --
a snoring sofa


(Ishikawa Takuboku 1886 - 1912, quite many translated in Finnish some years ago. Tried to read it again, but ... The language is not tankapoetry written in Finnish but some kind of raw-translations only. Otherwise Takuboku is an interesting poet, I think, anyway.)

 
Snoring car -- 
December snow 
silently all over

From the poem The Man with the Blue Guitar by Wallace Stevens:

The sea drifts through the winter air.

It is the sea that the north wind makes.
The sea is in the falling snow.

This gloom is the darkness of the sea.