#Haikai Challenge II #8 (2/25/24): leap year (Urudoshi) #haiku #senryu #haibun #tanka #kyoka #haiga #renga #HaikaiChallenge

I hope you enjoyed the snow while it lasted, haijin. Congratulations to last week’s contributors!

Haikai Challenge Participants

Looking ahead…

The interesting thing about having a solar calendar that is 356.25 days long is that extra day that comes along once every four years. Yes, it happens this week: another February 29th!

Because this year is a leap year:

A leap year (also known as an intercalary year or bissextile year) is a calendar year that contains an additional day (or, in the case of a lunisolar calendar, a month) compared to a common year. The 366th day (or 13th month) is added to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical year or seasonal year.^[1] Because astronomical events and seasons do not repeat in a whole number of days, calendars that have a constant number of days in each year will unavoidably drift over time with respect to the event that the year is supposed to track, such as seasons. By inserting (“intercalating“) an additional day, a leap day, or month, a leap month, into some years, the drift between a civilization’s dating system and the physical properties of the Solar System can be corrected.

An astronomical year lasts slightly less than 3651/4 days. The historic Julian calendar has three common years of 365 days followed by a leap year of 366 days, by extending February to 29 days rather than the common 28. The Gregorian calendar, the world’s most widely used civil calendar, makes a further adjustment for the small error in the Julian algorithm. Each leap year has 366 days instead of 365. This extra leap day occurs in each year that is a multiple of 4 (except for years evenly divisible by 100, but not by 400).

Since this Thursday is our extra February day, what better time than now to leap into action, and celebrate Leap Year?

This week, write the haikai poem of your choice (haiku, senryu, tanka, kyoka, haibun, haiga, renga, etc.) that alludes to leap year (Urudoshi).

As always:

1. write the haikai poem of your choice.
2. post the link of your post to Mister Linky.
3. pingback by posting the link to the challenge on your site.
4. read and comment on other contributors’ posts.