This happened when I was in the states, sometime before Covid. I was taking a walk and a school bus went past.

There isn't an obvious kigo (season word) this time, as in many of the past haiku I've shares, but the school year starts in late summer in the States. Well, in mid-summer these days. So we might consider the haiku to be set around that time. In truth, I don't remember when this actually happened, but as I read the haiku I get an image of autumn. Of kids hanging out the windows, wearing long sleeves and maybe jackets; orange and brown leaves falling from the trees and being crunched by the bus wheels.

In Japanese kigo, for continous events, mention of the event will often be assumed to take the season that that event begins in. For example, the school year begins in April in Japan, so mention of school by itself may automatically conjure up images of spring and of the cherry blossoms.

Weird, eh? Well, kigo can be kind of strange. In many ways, traditional haiku works on a kind of code. This means this. This refers to this. I've talked about the giant collections of kigo called saijiki before. Well, think of these tomes as codebooks.

I never actually took the schoolbus all that often. In jr high I took it once or twice, but it was dirty and loud and the kids were always fighting, so much more often I walked or rode my bicycle. Same in high school, until I got my own car, then I drove myself.

Yet seeing that schoolbus go by threw me back and I remembered my school years.

	David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku.

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