Challenge

Why we serve

by taohobo

Like some other veterans, or maybe it is just me, I’m embarrassed when you thank me for my service. It’s because we feel that we were just doing our duty, just doing our job. Because I’m flustered I don’t often remember that this is what I want to respond:

“No, as a veteran, I want to thank you for taking the freedom we’ve defended and using it to live your life to the fullest and paying it forward by being all that you can be and, when possible, lifting up just one other person. It is our honor to serve.”

Basho Haiku Challenge

by taohobo

Matsuo Basho (1644 – 1694) wrote this Haiku after he entered Koyasan monastery in about 1666. Poetry had been a leisure activity of the Samurai class and Basho had begun writing at an early age and continued to study and develop his art. He is today considered one of the major forces in the development and shaping of Haiku. So the challenge is to shape your own Haiku using the same Japanese words that inspired Basho:

   かれえだ に からす の とまり けり あきのくれ
   kareeda ni / karasu no tomari keri / akinokure
   On withered branch, was crow's resting, autumn ending

My interpretation, or translation, of this would be:

          A withered branch,
                  at a crow's alighting,
               nearly winter.

The Japanese for this is: Kareeda (withered, withered branch) ni (position/location) karasu (crow/raven) no (possessive) tomari (stop, end) keri (poetic past tense, recollection) akinokure (autumn dusk, end of autumn) – note that there is not punctuation to help define this and the kanji is the modern. Basho’s kanji would have been evenly spaced out and the reader would be expected to know the intended meaning. And, ‘keri’ can either be an indicator of past tense or poetic emphasis.

So, have fun. Play with it. Leave your haiku in a comment, as many as you like. Thanks for playing.