Ancient Warrior Ghosts

ancient warrior ghosts
mists over the foreign highlands –
waiting for the full moon

swords, spears and arrows bristling
in the silver lunar light

noble samurai
spirits drifting on the breeze
ever homeward bound

sadness and despair hidden
behind elaborate masks

now the mask is off
captured in a photograph
warrior revealed

fading into history
tinted albumen of time

Kim M. Russell, 15^th July 2018

My response to Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation #41 Soliloquy nor Renga ‘ancient warrior ghosts’

In this new episode of the special feature that gives us time to meditate and contemplate before submission, our challenge is to create a so-called ‘Soliloquy no Renga’ (or solo-renga) using a given hokku (or starting verse). The goal is to create renga on our own. A renga is built from three- and two-line stanzas to create ‘”chained verse’ with a minimum of six and a maximum of 24 stanzas as if it were a book, which means using the structure of preface, centerpiece and afterword, in a similar way to the classical haiku poets.

 The hokku for this challenge is:

ancient warrior ghosts
mists over the foreign highlands –
waiting for the full moon

© Chèvrefeuille