full moon:

       the smell of seaweed

       twice as strong

       -----------------

       Richard von Sturmer (1957-). From "Haiku World," by William J. Higginson, Kodansha 1996.

       The night is dark but for the bright orb of a full moon in the sky. It draws the eye and captures the visual sense to the point where nothing else is noticed regarding the poet's surroundings. Perhaps because the brain is normally overloaded with visual inputs, the other senses have now become keener. The smell of seaweed drifts with the wind and it seems so much stronger tonight than was noticed before. Depending on the reader, this haiku could seem ominous through conjuring up the image of a sea monster hauling itself out of the water and up the beach in the faerie light of the mystical moon, or one might simply think logically that a full moon occurs around a king tide, when the ocean's waters recede the most and therefore more seaweed is exposed, creating a stronger smell. Personally, I did not connect those logical dots until reading the poem over several times and was, instead, drawn to it by imagining that the poet's subconscious began thinking about natural cycles, birth and death, while looking at the moon, and that was why the seaweed seemed to smell stronger.

       Selected and commented on by Dhugal J. Lindsay

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