Sometimes, friends send me what I like to call: surprise-hippos. My friend saw this hippo guarding somebody's front door, in her neighborhood in Tokyo, named: Tomigaya. She wrote to me that she simply had to take a picture and send it to me. She also named the hippo after the area where she found it! When my friend moved to Japan, one of the first things I asked her was: what is "hippo" in Japanese? She immediately asked her teacher (who must have found it a bit funny, I guess....:-)) and found out it is: Kaba. So that explains the title of this post. A few weeks ago, one of my fellow hippo-collectors Diane shared her winning haiku sequence with the group. As haiku is a Japanese poetic form, I thought it would be nice to publish a "Japan special" this week! She won First Honorable Mention in the contest, which was the June Monthly contest sponsored by the Poets' Roundtable of Arkansas, her state poetry society. She enjoys writing haiku because she likes the challenge of saying what she wants to say well and in a limited number of syllables. The 'chosen' subject was "Why I love...." .... no need to guess what it is she loves! Dear Muriel, thank you for making and sending the photo, and of course for thinking about me. Still missing you a lot. Hope we will be able to meet up soon! Dear Diane, thank you so much for allowing me to put your haiku on my blog, I would love to read more of your work in the future, whether or not it is about our beloved hippos!
lumbering on land
pure weightless grace in water
hippos can do both
wide wide open mouth
aggressive survival chomps
closed-mouth – see the smile
oft times just like me
contradictions define them—
so I love hippos
Photograph by Mrs. Muriel Moorrees - Haiku sequence by Mrs. Diane Stefan
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