Strolling Haiku: 'Summer by the Water'
In the previous 'Rice Field LOVE: June' entry, I wrote that a great many living things
gather in the rice fields.
This time, feeling like an extra edition of 'Rice Field LOVE',
let's take our time observing the creatures.
White butterfly rises, sun returns to the rice seedlings Ririn
In haiku, butterflies are a spring seasonal word, but they exist quite well in summer too. As I was distracted by a cabbage white butterfly a few meters away,
Wings beat and the mountains and rivers stir, a swallowtail butterfly
The swallowtail butterfly has arrived. By the way, 'Agehacho' (swallowtail) is a summer seasonal word. Looking down at my feet, tadpoles are swimming. Among them, the slightly larger ones are those that hatched earlier. Perhaps because they just hatched, there is a school of extremely tiny ones. Something like a jelly-like string is drifting in the paddy water; it must have been tadpole eggs. There are various plants on the ridge. Oh, there are already daylily buds. They are the same color as the grass, so I almost overlooked them.
Tadpoles scattering like bright laughter
Mud drying, bright cloudy day, daylilies
And speaking of summer watersides, there are water striders. The reason the irrigation canal beside the rice field looks like it is sparkling is because many water striders are jumping incessantly. A single blade of grass has fallen from the ridge and is floating on the water surface. Several water striders are resting on it. Those water striders have stopped jumping, haven't they? Perhaps water striders don't jump because they want to splash the water. Long ago, when the ancestors of water striders happened to escape onto the water and survived, they might have become forced to keep jumping on the water even now. But if they could take it easy, there would be nothing better than that.
What happens to a water strider that stops jumping? Their small bodies get washed away by the water. People might not be much different from water striders. Though if it were a person, they could get off if they decided to get off.
Water striders do nothing but jump, evening falls on the town
Perhaps this water strider will tumble into the water
On this day, there was also one that was bad at jumping.