Day 13: One more moon poem

summer moonlight
the rosemary's shadow
darker than mine



For a blog called "No more moon poems", this is the 3rd haiku out of 13 that features the moon. A whopping 23% of them. What was that I said in my first post about coming up against the limits of my imagination when I look at the physical world? Sometimes that limitation is not knowing the name for a certain plant or bird or bug; and sometimes it means finding inspiration in the same thing over and over again.

I'm not happy with the first line of this one, though, moon poem or not. 'summer moonlight' is too generic. What is it about the moonlight that night that was so striking? It was very bright, very white. The moon was almost full, but not quite. That might be more specific and interesting:



July moon almost full --
the rosemary's shadow
darker than mine



That first line feels awfully long and clunky, though -- 6 syllables, and they're long syllables at that, full of long vowel sounds and consonant clusters. How about:


almost a full moon --
the rosemary's shadow
darker than mine



Still another option is to take the moon itself out of the poem and imply it some other way. This might open up room to include a second image, as well. Something like:


two owls hoot --
the rosemary's moonshadow
darker than mine



This feels like it might be the way to go (I'll keep playing with the first image -- the owls were the first thing to come to mind...) I'm not totally sold on the term 'moonshadow,' either, which might be too poetic for plainspoken haiku. We'll see how it sounds in the morning, by the light of the sun...