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.

After a chilly night a chilly morning. When having my morning tea by the window I saw our squirrel. It seemed to seek something, food perhaps?

The snow is sheltering the soil; under the thick snow there is much warmer. But the snow is not so thick at all yet. Does the squirrel know it?

 
Chilly morning -- 
buried under warm snow 
squirrel´s supplies?

a clinky winter

Arctic cold reached us. Our weathermen are surprised. Seems to be a winter, just now, already, this early. But I do like how river is rapidly icing. Icing river is making some noise. Word clinking's etymology: Middle English clinken, probably from Middle Dutch, says Webster.

  
a chilly wind 
clinking 
in the river's ice

Radio Telegraphy

Finnish Radio Officers celebrated yesterday; our Union is 90 years old. Telegraphy is no more used commercially. I met many retired Radio Officers; returned from Helsinki with an old friend of mine. In the train's cafe he had one beer and I a small bottle of red wine.

We sailed on the high seas a while. I remembered my trip up to Canadian NWT:

 
         a message 
         from the northern icefields --
         drifting iceberg

All Saints' Day, All Hallows day

We are going to visit the graveyard today. Got a long-burning candle with us to put it there in my mom's grave. (My father still lives; he is 92 years.) Today is also the New Moon. So the nightly sky was somewhat empty, just a few star between some drifting clouds. I read some Santoka, and stopped by this one:

The frosty night's bed must be somewhere.

Translation's copyright by Hiroaki Sato.

      No-one 
      slept with you, 
      o chilly night?

In my notebook the first version was a two-liner:

         Calm autumn day -- 
         a candle

a crane having
one more frog --
a warm autumn

comment moderation on again, sorry

Due to unknown url into my comment (which I removed) I had to turn comment moderation on again. Sorry for that. Tikkis

juhani.tikkanen@gmail.com

(gmail got a good enough spam-filter)

 
no more leaves 
to fall down -- 
this windy autumn

Between me
and this autumn rain
one leaking umbrella

 
a nervous bench --
an undelivered 
snowfall

 
a squirrel
participating 
this hectic autumn

 
yellowed leaves 
going to move ... 
a ceased snowfall

Fallen leaves - Zen

This morning this express train from Turku to Helsinki is ten minutes late, as usual.
During the last winter due to lot of snow. Now lot of fallen leaves on the rail making those slippery.
Checked my Email - waiting a message; none yet.
Surfing and found following:

Zen and the Art of Poetry: An Interview with Jane Hirshfield
by Ilya Kaminsky and Katherine Towler


url: http://www.bu.edu/agni/interviews/online/2006/towler.html

                ten minutes late --
             a morning-train's zen 
                for the fallen leaves

      chilly night -- 
      so many happy leaves 
      landed safely

wherever I walk
the fallen leaves crowded
all the paths


Yellow leaves sailing
from the shore
to the open sea


These are from September 2010 Kukai
(Both none points...)