NaPoMo, April 27

A wanderer,

so let that be my name--

the first winter rain

With only four more days remaining for the national poetry month to come to an end, there cannot be a better time to remember Matsuo Basho, widely recognized as the father of haiku and the greatest of the Japanese masters. He always wrote in a style that is simple and natural, yet with "a trace of the pathos of  the beautiful mortality".

With a warbler for
a soul, it sleeps peacefully,
this mountain willow




Along this road,
not a single soul-- only
autumn evening

And finally, this magical one:

the sea darkens--
a wild duck's call
faintly white