blossoming wintergreen
Crouching to photograph a mushroom, I spotted the white, bell-shaped blossom of Gaultheria procumbens next to it. My first reaction:
white bells in the summer woods wintergreen
which is kind of superficial and obvious, but definitely a haiku I would’ve been satisfied with just a few years ago. Then I gave it a thought and came up with
wintergreen in July’s bridal white
which seemed to point a way forward. I thought of Wallace Stevens’ great poem “The Snow Man” — very meaningful to me as someone born in winter —
mind of wintergreen blossoming in July
But that struck me as too cerebral, both literally and figuratively. I’m not saying the haiku I chose for this haiga is my final say, but I do think it preserves multiple possibilities for the reader.
