My lady, my tea

Your name is the secret slowly distilled
from hilltops shadowed by clouds, from rain
at breaking of dawn, from moon-dreams fulfilled,
from sunlight on waves; from pleasure and pain.
Anointed in attar and musk, your name
was whispered to stars the day you were born;
and taken by rivers, by wind it was claimed,
your name is since then forever adorned
with crocus in spring, in summer: lavender bloom
with apples in fall, in winter with snow;
your name is persistent, it’s imminent doom,
the wailing of storms and afterward — glow
Some call you landscape or simply our earth
I know you’re phoenix from death into birth.

summer morn sunshine
and my lady’s still snoring —
sipping my tea

Frank hosts haibun Monday today at dVerse and inspires us to write something inspired by both Shakespeare and Basho. I went and found a sonnet I wrote a while ago, and when I saw how much nature it was I thought that maybe this is could be a sonnet by Basho writing about nature, and then I added a “haiku” that could have been written by Shakespeare.
—

April 27, 2020

20 responses to “My lady, my tea”

like the flow and the dark / light elements.
Grand work.
Hope you are well and staying safe.
~Moonie

Oh, this is genius, Björn! I love them both, sonnet and haiku. I wonder if Basho read anything by Shakespeare, It couldn’t have happened vice versa, but I think Shakespeare would have like playing around with the sonnet form. I adore the opening lines of the sonnet:
‘Your name is the secret slowly distilled
from hilltops shadowed by clouds, from rain
at breaking of dawn…’;
‘your name is since then forever adorned
with crocus in spring, in summer: lavender bloom
with apples in fall, in winter with snow’;
and the internal rhyme in ‘your name is persistent, it’s imminent doom’.

Nicely done, with the Shakespeare/Bashō inversion.

Brilliant! I love that idea of the masters trying out each other’s form. Your sonnet so captures the beauty and essence of nature, and that haiku practically walks out of Sonnet #130!

Björn Rudberg (brudberg) April 27, 2020 at 22:10 · · Reply →

Ha… I love how you captured the sonnet number…
- Frank J. Tassone April 27, 2020 at 22:17 · ·
  
  I knew the sonnet right away–a teacher with whom I worked and I taught it to 10th graders. Failing to recall its number, however, I contacted my old pal, Google. 😉

Such a wonderful flipping of the script, Bjorn. Any woman would swoon to have this recited to them. Poets have the best lines 😉

An eloquent out-of-the-box response to the challenge, Bjorn. Bravo

A sonnet, an lode to Nature, the original romance. Your flip-flop of masters and forms was genius. This was not an easy prompt for me. My haibun became a bit lengthy, and my haiku a senryu.