Haiku Classic: April 3, 2022
(Mainichi Japan)
dandelion puffs:
our gray-haired
children
--
Raymond Roseliep (1917-1983). From "High/Coo," Issue 6 (23), February 1982.
The elderly poet and his wife stand before a lawn that is sprinkled with dandelions and their seed puffs. It is a family gathering and before them on the lawn are several middle-aged adults playing with their children, picking dandelion puffs and blowing the seeds into the wind. Those parents are the poet's grown-up children and their hair is already visibly gray. The ephemeralness of life is conveyed well through "dandelion puffs". The scattering seeds, wafting away on the wind, meshes well with the image of offspring and their offspring, in turn, going forth and multiplying.
Selected and commented on by Dhugal J. Lindsay
