summer’s last moonlight–– / a persimmon half-naked / beneath a leaf
Hermitage A Haiku Journal Volume III 2006
The Equinox and Solstice dates were favorite times for writing.
On a favorite trail in Tennessee there was a lone persimmon tree near a mountain top. On the equinox night and day length are the same, now the turning point of the season from summer into autumn. There on the trail was a perfect image- summer’s seedy fruit languishing in warm moonlight, half-naked, now half-covered by autumn’s first falling leaf. The globular fruit, the turning of the seasons.
I wrote the haiku when I passed by on my daily rounds up the mountain, only recognizing later how sweetly it captured the turning of the time.
