This is the “Cold Dew” season for Colleen Chesebro’s #TankaTuesday challenge based on the 24 Japanese seasons.
All Northern Hemisphere Weather is Not Similar
When I was a child in Michigan I loved fall because by the end of idyllic summers I was bored and ready for a change. My neighbor had a huge garden, and he let us harvest his pumpkin patch. He would gather his corn stalks and tie them together into teepee-shaped shocks. The air began to cool and the maple trees would turn red, the oaks yellow. My father and I would rake the falling leaves into piles. Then I would jump in the crunchy heaps and pretend to be Joan of Arc burning at the stake. Before my father lit the piles, he would pull me out, shaking his head at my dramatics. As an adult, I moved out west, away from the vivid seasons of Michigan. Today I live in Arizona, where it is October 11 and still 100F degrees.
Time to carve pumpkins,
Halloween Jack O’Lanterns,
and swim in the pool.
My kigo (season) word is “pumpkin patch.” I wrote a haibun because I wanted to convey more information than I could in most syllabic forms. This is because of the contrast between the idea of the “Cold Dew” season and the reality of October 2023 in Phoenix, Arizona.
