Bindii Report: Zoom meeting in October

Bindii Report                                   Zoom meeting in October

On Sunday October 25 six of us attended another Zoom meeting: Julia Wakefield, Steve Wigg, Maeve Archibald, Stella Damarjati Lynette Arden and Beverley George. This time we attempted a sequence based on the two prompts supplied by Beverley George: SECLUSION and GARDENS. Beverley did not take part in the sequence, but she was happy to contribute her comments.

 Some of us found the former topic quite challenging at first, but as we worked on the sequence we found we were able to incorporate quite a few of the garden haiku into what began as a seclusion sequence. We all agreed to share the final sequence online, so here it is:

 

Threads of Gold

 

cold and quiet

this early morning

threads of gold                                MA

 

lifted from the earth

the pale-yellow sun

of a native orchid                            SW

 

a black moth

plays hide and seek

in a white lily                                    MA

 

within the weeds

a tiny begonia

almost lost                                        MA

 

footpath garden

among the agapanthus

a dwarf peach sets fruit                LA

 

straining

to peck at nasturtiums

porcelain rooster                            SW

 

‘no trespassing’

but a dandelion flowers

among the roses                             LA

 

through blinding sunshine

butterflies

pinpoint the path                            JW

 

sequestered

in marauding creepers

the scent of jasmine                       JW

 

afternoon sun

the brief melody

of a blackbird's song                      SD

 

riverside bench

the sound of water rushing

over the weir                                   SD

 

Working together on a sequence of this nature provoked us to think deeply about what we notice as individuals when we walk through a garden. We found ourselves wandering through both time and space, from the quiet secrets of an early morning to a cacophony of sound in the late afternoon. We remarked on the fact that many of our haiku focused on the mingling of the senses, e.g. when a perfume ‘scents’ an image, or the song of a blackbird adds colour to the sunlight.

Following on from this sharing of perspectives, and inspired by the Haiku@ the Oaks report https://australianhaikusociety.org/2020/10/15/haiku-the-oaks-canberra-21/,  I suggested that next time we each try composing some haiku prompted by 4 or 5 concrete nouns, as demonstrated in Hansha Teki’s Bipedal Verses https://heliosparrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/Bipedal_Verses-Hansha_Teki.pdf  so we could compare our different responses to each prompt. Whether we can attempt the ‘parallel verse’ approach will be a matter for speculation.

We will see what develops from this at our next meeting on Saturday November 29.

 

 

 Julia Wakefield