haikaiTALKS: a saturday gathering! 30th May 2026

Srinivas Sambangi
24 hours ago
3 min read

haikaiTALKS: time in haiku|a saturday gathering under the banyan tree

A Disclaimer

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If anyone feels that it is similar to another haikai, they are encouraged to contact the relevant poet directly.

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haikaiTALKS

Guest poet: Srinivasa Rao Sambangi

haikaiTALKS: a Saturday gathering under the banyan tree

30th May 2026

Time in haiku

“Time is nothing but an abstract measure of motion. We are living in an eternal now”

--Alan Watts

Haiku is all about capturing a fleeting moment in time. It’s about recognising the moments that slip away before we know it. But this week, we wish to explore time as a unit, a measurement. Time as a unit allows us to synchronise social activities, quantify distances, and sequence of events. Without measuring precise time, essential worldly systems will collapse. Time is something that can’t be touched or felt, seen or heard but it’s always there slipping through our moments of joy and sadness.

There are several haiku written by the masters as well as contemporary writers about time as a measurement.

At a riceless time,

The gourd receptacle holds

An ominaeshi.

Basho (tr. By David C. Buchanan)

“Riceless times” for peasants and the poor were frequent in seventeenth-century Japan. People then would eat barley, sweet potatoes, or weeds from the field. The ominaeshi, a flower known for its fragile beauty is edible. Basho was very poor and depended on his friends and disciples for food. A receptacle made from a gourd was kept outside his dwelling into which rice and other articles of food were put by the poet’s admirers.

(“riceless times” is not used for a particular moment but for a period of time)

Some more examples:

all day fog

a buoy marks

our place in time

Kristen Lindquist

(fog sustains for a longer period than a moment)

You may wish to read the commentary on this poem here:

https://www.theheronsnest.com/March2026/editors-choices.html

seventh month

whispering nongendered names

to her belly

Randy Brooks

blue hour

a door opens

to my past

Gregory Longenecker

golden hour

grandfather candles

the old jack pine

Terry L. French

mayflies . . .

casting a line the length

of my lunch hour

Chad Lee Robinson

half time

my son and I exchange

our goal posts

Srinivasa Rao Sambangi

(half time here indicates middle age, may be 45 years’ duration and also the half time of a soccer game)

Prompt:

Please write one or two haiku with time as a measurement. Note the subtle difference between time as a moment and time as a measurement. In case of doubt, please see the examples given again

Thanks to Joanna Ashwell for suggesting this topic

KIGO WORDS

Shall we please try to include a kigo word in all the poems we share here?

Give the season and the word — under your poem.

For seasonal references, please check these lists:

“A Dictionary of Haiku Classified by Season Words with Traditional and Modern Methods,” by Jane Reichhold:

https://thehaikufoundation.org/omeka/files/original/7fb6654a1dfd1afef97369da920530f8.pdf

indian subcontinent SAIJIKI:

https://www.trivenihaikai.in/indian-saijiki

The Five Hundred Essential Japanese Season Words:

http://www.2hweb.net/haikai/renku/500ESWd.html

The World Kigo Database: