Author: Janice

My name is Janice.  I started blogging as Ontheland when I moved from Toronto to a rural area near Kingston, Ontario in Canada.  Over time I have found myself writing poetry, mostly in Japanese forms, such as haiku and haibun.  One of my deepest interests is the natural world: the joy of it and how we can look after it better.

life plans

life plans

trailing the sun

few birds twitter

this cold November night

a shift to C minor

.

.

©️2019 Ontheland

Inspired by November with Basho Day 2:

Very Early on the twenty-seventh morning of the third moon, under a predawn haze, transparent moon barely visible, Mount Fuji just a shadow, I set out under the cherry blossoms of Ueno and Yanaka. When would I see them again?…

Spring passes

and the birds cry out– tears

in the eyes of fishes

Sam Hamill (Trsl.), The Essential Basho, page 4

spinning – – haibun

“The moon and sun are eternal travellers”

~Basho

.

.

spinning: the moon, the sun, planet earth, solar systems, the Milky Way … a spiral dance to eternity.

unity

what we always have

known and lost

.

.

©️2019 Ontheland

Thank you to Frank Tassone for offering a November with Matsuo Basho feature, using for inspiration Basho’s The Narrow Road to the Interior as translated by Sam Hamill. Day 1’s excerpt is this:

The Moon and Sun are eternal travelers. Even the years wander on. A lifetime adrift in a boat, or in old age leading a tired horse into the years, every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home…

Even this grass hut

may be transformed

into a doll’s house

Basho, “Narrow Road to the Interior” The Essential Basho (Trsl. Sam Hamill) pg. 3,4