To Eleanor Rigby,
To Father McKenzie, and all the lonely people,
A Merry Christmas
Unorthodox, perhaps, but it is what I am thinking.
A Beatles’ Song
Bashō no yōna, December 25, 2023
Once new, now,
So very long ago
Eleanor Rigby is a song by the Beatles from their 1966 album Revolver, on YouTube if you want to check it out.
Matsuo Basho, I suspect, like most writers wrote down his thoughts on tiny pieces of paper and stuffed them into his pockets. Sometimes pulling them out, polishing the words, writing them down in a better form, publishing them. The ratio of random thoughts to published poems likely being similar to our view of an iceberg floating in the Arctic waters.
Sometimes one has one’s own random thoughts.
Random thoughts — of some importance,
Bashō no yōna, December 2022
but never written down,
are soon forgotten.
Anniversaries, birthdays, and Christmas, I’m often a day behind.
Merry Christmas!
How do you write Japanese haiku on Christmas Day?
You layer up, wear a silly knit cap to amuse your daughter and son-in-law. They call you a “cone head” while guffawing. You put on thick mittens and add a scarf about your face. You leave.
Off you go to the park to face another day. There is beauty in the silence of the morning. Sunlight on snow, an icy breeze, the cold air you intake. There is something reassuring about another runner passing by. Something delightful about two kids trying to sled on hill that is not much more than a gully.
Sounds like fun
The crunch of snow on frozen leaves
— A Winter’s RunWhoosh, whooosh,
Whoosh, whooosh, …
Footfalls in the snowIt Snowed last Night
Bashō no yōna, Christmas 2022
The World is white,
This Christmas morning
Merry Christmas!
matsuo-basho-haiku 