blizzard
the redness of a bullfinch
in the bare trees
*
after I wrote this, I was thinking, for a European bird like the bullfinch, I felt the redness needed to be stated. Perhaps I should have pretended the bird was a robin, as the redness there would be a given, even if the exact species of robin in the mind's eye would vary depending on the reader's geographical location..... any thoughts?
There is nothing quite like the redness of the male bullfinch Juliet and this haiku says so - what more could we wish for.
ReplyDeleteThere are few things more beautiful than the color of a bird in contrast to the snow.
ReplyDeleteYou have captured and heightened the contrast by using the names of the colours, in my opinion! I think you probably need a Bullfinch colour because the female is not so bright, so it is not automatically obvious to the reader what colour you might be seeing.
ReplyDeleteI like it as is. And the language suggests that, in a blizzard, it's the bird's color, more than the bird itself, that presents itself to your vision. It's half a beat later that "redness" becomes "bullfinch."
ReplyDeleteit's beautiful..a superb snapshot, the very words -redness-blizzard-bullfinch- so naturally merging in one another's energy.
ReplyDeleteI just watched a documentary about killer blizzards in Minnesota. They said that the first known mention of the word blizzard (at least in this country) was in the 1880's when it was used to refer to a flurry of punches in a boxing match. The newspapers then used the word during the winter of 1880 to 1881 which produced 7 major snowstorms that literally buried trains and houses and killed dozens of people. It's a very descriptive and powerful word!
ReplyDeleteQuite nice as is
ReplyDeleteI love this haiku - this is a very startling and direct image. Opening it with just one word - 'blizzard' - makes it more forceful.
ReplyDelete