The One Essential Truth

I couldn’t help but think of the opening lines of Basho’s famous travel diary Oku-no-hosomichi (“Narrow Road to the Deep North”) when I read Tricycle’s Best of Season haiku for Spring 2026:

The moon and sun are eternal travelers. Even the years wander on. A lifetime adrift in a boat, or in old age leading a tired horse into the years, every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home. (trans. Sam Hamill)

If I had to sum up Basho’s masterwork in three words, they would be “Life is movement!” That is very different from the more explicitly Buddhist assertion “Life is fleeting!” Basho often mourns the passing of time in his haiku, especially when visiting places of historical significance, but it isn’t where his head is at from one day to the next.

Basho was the first haiku poet to articulate an ecological truth that lies at the heart of human experience: that all life moves in that Great Circle we call “the Four Seasons of the Year.” Even an aimless or unambitious life is a journey for the person who claims their place within that circle.

The “branch of yellow” is almost certainly forsythia—a shrub with long, thin gently arching branches. After a week of rain, its bright bell-shaped flowers announce the arrival of early spring.

The best haiku use ordinary language to trigger associations that, while not explicitly spelled out, still allow the reader to make the small cognitive leap that is necessary to complete the meaning of the poem. In this case, the yellow branch left behind by a week of clouds is the “calling card” of the spring rain—a satisfying turn of thought reminding us of an earlier era when neighbors dropped by for impromptu visits and everyone trusted their eyes to tell them the season rather than consulting a weather app.

Where is the poet in all of this? What are her feelings and thoughts? We are left to read between the lines. The use of past tense tells us that spring is nearly over. The forsythia lingers in the poet’s mind as a reminder of those drizzly days of early April that would have felt dreary but for the promise of a world coming back into flower at the end of them.

The poem is about that promise—a small testament to the yearly triumph of circular time. Everything passes. But then everything returns. The only thing needed for life’s journey is faith in that one essential truth.

♦

The Tricycle Haiku Challenge asks readers to submit original works inspired by a season word. Moderator Clark Strand selects the top poems to be published in Tricycle with his commentary.

To see past winners and submit your haiku, visit tricycle.org/haiku.