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Sheryl Crow Weather
Discovering new ways to look at the seasons
A year or more ago, I began reading Ann Collins. She writes about discovering the world around her through microseasons. Collins explains microseasons this way:
The idea of microseasons comes from ancient Chinese farming culture dividing the year into 24 seasons, each with a poetic name according to the Sun’s position and its effect on the agriculture of that region.
Some time later, this way of marking time was adopted in ancient Japan, where each season was subdivided into three parts, creating a total of 72 seasons lasting about five days each.
One of my gigs is a haiku poet. Most haiku poetry collections are organized according to the standard four seasons, spring, summer, winter, and fall, because the season plays a central role in the traditional Japanese haiku form.
I started reading Collins’s newsletter because it added a beautiful bit of wonder to my life, but it has also inspired me to rethink how I might organize my haiku poetry in the future.
Instead of 24 Chinese agricultural seasons or 72 Japanese microseasons, how do I make sense of the passing of time?
My microseasons are more irregular and irreverent.
