(See this post for an explanation of what’s going on here.)
Jane:
“[T]his is probably one of the very oldest poetical techniques. It has been guessed that early spiritual knowledge was secretly preserved and passed along through riddles….
“One can ask: ‘what is still to be seen’
on all four sidesof the long gone shack
The answer is:
calla lilies
“Or another one would be:
spirit bodieswaving from cacti
plastic bags
“…The more intriguing the ‘set-up’ and the bigger surprise the answer is, the better the haiku seems to work. … keep it true, keep it simple and keep it accurate and make it weird.
“Oh, the old masters favorite trick with riddles was the one of: is that a flower falling or is it a butterfly? … if you wish to experiment (the ku may or may not be a keeper) you can ask yourself the question: if I saw snow on a branch, what else could it be? Or seeing a butterfly going by you ask yourself what else besides a butterfly could that be?”– Jane Reichhold, Haiku Techniques
*
Me:
chewing the stale crumbs
of my future
fortune cookie
new leaves stained with
gouts of fresh blood
first strawberries
Red Dragonfly 
wonderful inspiration – i am surprised – and your art, and its tradition has changed my point of view! I did post about art as i mentioned i would…
soft debris
in the bedroom
laundry!
EB
okay, it’s not haiku … 😉
I’m still trying to digest the zen haiku and now it seems to me the riddle might lend itself to zen association – maybe. Dang zen, it evades description.
Elisabeth–I enjoyed your essay on art, maybe because that’s always been my opinion about what art should do as well. 🙂 I think what this whole project is about for me is learning how to see in a different way, and to use language in the most economical way possible to communicate what I’ve seen.
Steve–Yeah, get working on that description of Zen for me, will you. 🙂 I keep using the damn word and not having any idea what I’m talking about. One of these days it will come back to bite me. 🙂