Weekly Scribblings #53: Beautiful Words

Hello Word Artists and Admirers! In Japanese tea ceremony, it is customary to give your tools special poetic names. Part of the ceremony usually includes sharing the names of any special objects with your guests. The tea scoop used should have a name that reflects the season or time of year.

Since many of us students don’t have fancy scoops with special names, we’ll often just pick a name that works. For instance, in my last lesson of 2020, I called my tea scoop toshiwasure, which means ‘forget the year’.

For this week’s prompt, I’ve selected a few poetic names from Bruce Hamana Sosei’s book, 100 Beautiful Words in The Way of Tea. Pick the English version of one (or more if the mood hits you) to shape your words around.

Zuiun – clouds that predict good fortune

Shitamoe – plants sprouting under last year’s dried grass or under the snow

Hatsuyume – the first dream of the new year

Uzumibi – buried fire

Ryokuin – green shadows (sunlight filtering through green leaves)

Hotaru-gari – go searching for fireflies

Tsuki-koru – the moon freezes

 

I'm taking new word offerings of poetry or prose, fiction or non-fiction. Just be sure to keep all prose offerings to 369 words or fewer, and it'd be helpful to me if you indicate which phrase you're going with someplace in your post. Thanks!