Having Felled Comments

by Masaoka Shiki, a different haiku with 'cotton roses' cotton roses flowering — the mandarin duck in the old pond is a widower - ''cotton rose'' is a plant with white and red flowers - here 'widower' is not a simile: traditionally, people in Japan (and Cina and Korea) believed that these ducks mate for life. In Masaoka Shiki's haiku, the duck is the survived member of a couple.