Haiku 7: Being alive...

Here is today's haiku:

生て居るばかりぞ我とけしの花

And in romaji:

"ikite iru bakari zo ware to keshi no hana"

And English: "Being alive, just me and the poppy flower."

This is a haiku by Issa. Issa is famous for his empathic poems about animals, but here you see him feeling a deep, living connection with a poppy flower, けしの花, keshi no hana, the poppy's blossom. Me: alive! The poppy: also alive!

I learned from the wiktionary that keshi originally referred to tiny mustard seeds and the mustard plant that produces them (the meaning of the kanji in Chinese), but then starting around the 1400s, it referred to the poppy plant and its tiny seeds.

art by Katsushika Hokusai

My vocabulary for today:

花
はな
"flower, blossom"