My good friend Yu Chang (who, in fact, gave me my first “real” camera a few years ago) drove over to Washington Avenue on Tuesday (April 23) to capture some of the early cherry blossoms for me while I’m away visiting family.
Here’s a compilation I’ve constructed of his photos to remind me of what I’m missing, and to motivate me to get back to the Stockade before the cherry blossoms disappear.
– click on the collage for a larger version –
Prof. Chang (Union College, Electrical-Computer Engineering Department) is a world-renowned haiku poet who was an Honored Guest Poet for several years at my now all-archive weblog f/k/a. I’m proud to have him as my first Honored Guest Photographer here at suns along the Mohawk. Here’s one of his haiku poems that appeared at f/k/a:
shutter lag –
just bees
on the blossoms
………….. by Yu Chang – from Upstate Dim Sum
My very first web post about our Stockade cherry blossoms was in 2008 at f/k/a; click here for an array of photos and of haiku about cherry blossoms. I hope to be back to Washington Avenue before a replay of this poem, which I wrote in 2008:
windy day 
more blossoms at the curb
than on the tree
… david giacalone
Blossoming Bonus:
Roberta Beary, one of my best friends and a much-honored haiku poet, responded from Washington, D.C. this morning to my request to use some of her poems on cherry blossoms in this webpost, by sending a generous bouquet of haiku. Please enjoy them, along with more of Yu Chang’s photos from this week on Washington Avenue:
cherry blossoms,
the deaf dog
tourists gone —
a night breeze
stirs the blossoms
.
. . . . by Roberta Beary, from various publications
:
suns along the Mohawk 
anticipating
pink bud to bloom open wide
inhale the nectar
By: tomas on April 25, 2013
at 2:37 pm
hello, Tom. Thanks for sending your own haiku inspiration. I see you are using the “traditional” 5 -7- 5 syllable format. Which surprises me for an iconoclast like yourself.
Have i ever told you the many reasons why The Haiku Society of America, and most English-language haiku poets, try to write fewer syllables, and concluded that 5-7-5 was a misinterpretation of Japanese haiku not satisfying in English? Did you know that the Japanese language does not have syllables, and the sounds they are counting include breath and punctuation symbols? Japanese haiku poets always wonder why the English used so many words in their haiku, but that was a result of the 5-7-5 rule. There is much more on this topic at f/k/a, since lawyers seemed to want to know about how to apply (and circumvent) the rules.
Don’t get me wrong, though, it’s great you left a poem, and 5-7-5 is now simply thought of as the outer limit of the number of syllables in haiku and a fine tradition to follow for those who like the discipline of keeping within that custom.
By: David Giacalone on April 25, 2013
at 2:47 pm
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By: floating on July 16, 2013
at 1:43 am