More Ancient than a Kyoto Temple

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

There’s old and then there’s old.  The haiku form

Evolved four hundred years ago—and that is old—

But not as ancient as the frogs in warm

Kyoto afternoons.  These creatures scold

With croak, croak, croaking by a mossy pond

Until we get quite sick of them.  Their fixed, hard

Complacent smirk does not imply beyond

Them is some bodhi spiritually jarred

Inside the poet, but instead a frog

Plops down from stone and hits the surface of

The ancient water, or he plops from log.

Your ear hears change to slightest watery shove.

  The frog and water, plop, and moss and stone

    Are older than the haiku’s muffled tone.

Both the Bing image generator and the Genisis image creator REFUSED REPEATEDLY to turn the splasing frog in the correct direction.  Fartificial Unintelligence x 2.

© Phillip Whidden