the plucked banjo string
of a tanager
One of 24 haiku (many of them admittedly pretty bad) that I drafted in the course of a ten-mile ramble through central Pennsylvania’s Seven Mountains area on Friday, mostly on trails that I’ve hiked and camped along dozens of times over the decades. This old ridgetop spring was originally built for watering horses, I believe.
I didn’t think I was the only one to compare a scarlet tanager’s “energetic and very distinctive chick-burr” call to a plucked banjo string, but a web search only turns up my own posts. Oh well.
Great photo and I am not sure I have heard the banjo string/ tanager comparison before. But it makes sense.
Thanks. I mean for the purposes of the haiku I guess it’d be better if this isn’t a frequent comparison – it makes a stronger suggestion of the speaker’s imagination going into overdrive.