no title #1

[justlikeyou]

[RiverNotch]

There's no unity in the two objects you show here, I think. The unity comes in the context of the picture, and yet still, if you'd depend that much on the picture for the integrity of your own work, instead of having the picture solely elevate it, I don't think you did something right. There's no click for me, no direct association I don't have to rationalize in order to see how the trimmed living relates to Autumn, or to Autumn's shadows -- set up a bridge between the two ideas, though, and I think you'd be set.

[just mercedes]

The living what? Is 'the landscaper' supposed to be God or a gardener in the cemetery? You've personified autumn. Many fussy complications in what should be a process of simplification, compression.

[justlikeyou]

The back story is that as I drive through a cemetery that other day, I observed a landscaper cutting back grass and dandelions with a weed walker, living things, next to a grave stone while in the shade of a big pine. It is October, autumn.

[RiverNotch]

"a landscaper cutting back grass and dandelions with a weed walker, living things, next to a grave stone while in the shade of a big pine."

Because of the directness there, that line of prose is somehow more effective in conveying the scene than your haiku. Not the mood, surely, but one of the things about haiku is that it is a synthesis of mood and scene -- you speak through concrete objects, just as the concrete objects speak to you, and the two ideas unify into one moment of enlightenment. Right now, there's no such crystallization here, only an abstract feeling, and haiku doesn't deal with feelings, it deals with experiences. You dig?