Wilderness Interface Zone

Wow! What a winter solstice we’ve got this year, with the world’s end at hand–an event for which (let’s face it) there has always been the potential.

On WIZ’s bucket list: striking up the haiku band. In case of the world’s end, think of a haiku chain as a virtual holding-of-hands as we all face a banquet table heaped with just desserts.

Haiku basics: A haiku is a classical Japanese poetical form, usually 17 syllables all in a single line in Japanese, but there are longer and shorter forms.  Englishers commonly stack haiku lines, often in the order of one short line of 5 syllables on top, a long line of 7 syllables in the middle, then another short line of 5 syllables on the bottom.  But given that we might all not be here in five minutes, let’s not stand on formality. If you want to say “Hello Winter!” or “Goodbye Sweet World!” in some other haiku-esque form, please do. Given the circumstances, humor will be permitted–just this once.

Instructions. I’ll forge the first chain link. Somebody follows me, adding a single haiku in the comments, then another person and another, etc.  You may link your haiku to an image in the previous haiku or stud the chain with something free-wheeling. Other than the informal, “one-at-a-time-please” tradition, there’s no limit to turns a participant can take and no deadline for this activity.  It runs until an ominous curtain of silence falls. Or maybe ’til spring comes. Whichever happens first.

Here’s my first shot. It’s not especially humorous, but hey, I just finished setting fate in motion for another kind of doomsday–the End-of-Semester. Grim business.

Sunflower sprouts in
winter’s black loam and ripe cold;
its pale stalk lengthens.

What’ve you got?