Marie-Hélène Visconti is a French painter/photographer with a penchant for haikus.
She writes in French (so the haikus are conceived of in French) and then translates them into English.
This gives them that mysterious, intriguing edge ... when the English words/phrases seem to almost fluctuate/slip away from what they seemingly are meant to convey in English.
In 'A season of Haikus' Marie-Hélène presents a haiku for each of the four seasons.
But not the celebratory kind that one might expect!
This Green Poetry section is all about raising the Green Zeitgeist, increasing our collective awareness and appreciation for the Equation of Life.
This equation is a holistic, synergistic one, wherein Life in all its forms is engaged/inter connected with all life forms and their habitats.
It includes the current total repository for Life as we know it - Planet Earth, and we depend on this planet, our home, for the perpetuation of our species.
Haikus are meant to challenge, juxtapose and they provide a powerful means for honing our understanding of where we are in the Equation of Life.
We saw from Ando Perez the short impactful probes of her micro poetry.
In Spring, the softness of the cherry blossoms speak of the hope that each spring brings, the reassurance of rebirth, over and over.
Yet the 'naked black branches' are there, a reminder of our vulnerability, that 'forever' in our human consciousness is not 'forever' in its mathematical sense.
Summer should follow Spring - but we will come back to this one just now, because Marie-Hélène Visconti 's Summer is unexpected.
Her Autumn, is what we would expect, although again, almost ...
It speaks of delicate beauty, as Midori Chan would sense in this spontaneous combustion/explosion of autumnal beauty, that there is an end that is being underlined, urging us to wish for an Eternity that could somehow be achieved.
Marie-Hélène Visconti is almost fatalistic in her Autumn, knowing that its splendour is prior to an End, that the End is immediate once the splendour is over.
In Winter, she has leaves trying to 'play flower', trying to regain that which has been lost?
She has the contrast of a 'bright and cold sun' and winter ending the 'circle' when circles do not end, they continue forever, each 'end' blossoming into a new 'beginning'.
The red leaves do indeed look like flowers, and the 'naked black branches' of the Spring haiku are there, as they always were, in a bokeh that accompanies us throughout the haikus, if not in form then at least in underlying sense.
We certainly need to cherish the Equation of Life, never taking it for granted.
But it is her Summer that intrigues.
Perhaps her Summer is a warning, to beware of the illusion, the false sense of security that we can easily fall into, thinking all is well in the Sense of Eternity that summers tend to convey.
Summer is her greatest challenge to us, making us wonder at the image she has offered for her mysterious summer haiku?
The warning that Time flows quickly, that there is at least a 'kid' out there (some of us?) who has sensed this and is 'frightened of death' (the end of the world as we know it?)
