What is the meaning of Ki No Akimine's haiku "Hitomaro"?

Question

HITOMARO

My thoughts are with a boat
Which travels island-hid
In the morning-mist
Of the shore of Akashi, --
Dim, Dim!

Answer 1

Hitomaro is a very famous Japanese poet of the "Nara" period who lived 662-710 C.E. He wrote chokas and tankas (long poems and short poems), and the poem you presented above is not a "haiku", but a tanka (consisting of 31 syllables).

In Akashi, Hyogo Prefecture, the "shore" cited in the poem, there is Kakinomoto Jinja, a shrine devoted to Hitomaro. The shrine holds every year an utakai (waka party) devoted to him.

Two of Hitomaro's most famous poems are "In the sea of ivy clothed Iwami" and "The Bay of Tsunu", both of them referenced by the tanka you posted.

The poem evokes the image of Hitomaro as a boat, or in a boat, traveling in the morning mist between islands so that no one can see him...off the shore of the place made sacred to him...calling out "Dim, Dim!" an obscure personal moniker perhaps.