Mostly Haiku

Yesterday we drove to Verwood near Bournemouth to visit our son and daughter-in-law for their autumn family B.B.Q.. The journey would normally take about 75 minutes, but yesterday, with everyone heading for the Beaches, The New Forest and the West Country beyond, it took nearly three hours. I recorded the event thus:

Cars backed up for miles
but suddenly the road clears -
who gave the order?

Traffic news breaks in
interrupting the music -
poor news for someone.

On the car ahead
written in the dust SHIT YOU!
and through the rear screen
a small boy pokes out his tongue -
nothing else to see for miles.

Cerulean blue
with white chalk playground scribble
a Gordian knot -
the sky's wild loops and hatchings
fading slightly as we look.

Journey's end at last:

Sun and clear blue sky
smoke rises from the barby
triggering low cloud.

No problems driving home

Sun warms the far hills
picking out each bush and tree -
headlights here a must.

I am submitting this post in answer to Mary's Poetics prompt Autumn at dVerse Poets.

Haiku from yesterday

Went AWOL yesterday. Doreen and I took ourselves off to RHS Gardens at Wisley, it being the time of year for them to host The Surrey Sculpture Societiy's Annual Sculpture Trail. What we had not realised was that it was also the first day of their Annual Flower Show, the two together amounting to a reasonably tiring, but very worthwhile, day. Some images of the sculptures will follow anon, but here for now are a few haiku that came out of it.

Like a breath exhaled
the butterfly has landed
the leaf is trembling

Earth spurts out of earth
out of sight and burrowing
life springs eternal

Small girl feeds the ducks
out of an enormous bag
half goes in her mouth

Among the grasses
Eve folded like a foetus -
a nut split open

Slate and iron trees
serrated edges saw-like
hint at their demise?

Two Haiku and a double Haiku

nine feet and climbing
the sunflowers are leaning
away from the wind

---

among all the cars
two boys bounce on pogo sticks -
drivers unhappy

---

dreaming in the night
a tray stacked with crockery
dropped by a waiter

whilst lying awake
my wife hears the sound of it
above the high wind

Triple Haiku and Tanka

blackbird and robin
feeding beneath the rose bush -
tit-bits on the path

small birds above them
chomping among dead petals
for hidden insects

rose petals falling
confetti on the bride and groom
as they fly away

---

Like choir boys of old
scratching their names on the pew,
donors to the roof
can see their particulars
as part of the church fabric

watercolour and haiku

on a broiling day
a distant stretch of water
reflects its coolness   

I am now giving myself a few days off blogging, a week at the most, the more effectively to attack a few domestic projects that are becoming bogged down - not least, one associated with our daughter's 25th Wedding Anniversary - and maybe to catch up on my reading and re-charge the batteries, that sort of thing. (I am also hoping that by then Blogger will have put its house in order.)

I do intend to be keep up with the visiting, though maybe not commenting quite as much. My grateful thanks to you all for support thus far. See you again anon.

Four Haiku

the hover mower
blowing earth from nearby beds
creating dust storms

on the hedgehog house
a thrush taps insistently
out pops a robin

in the back garden
half an empty bird's egg shell
in the front the rest

on the blue rose bush
all the blooms hide their faces -
from us and from the sun

Two Haiku

Timed to perfection
let Easter come when it will -
the tree peony.


After grass cutting
cuttings hang like Christmas chains
from the spiders' silks

A week in Haiku

writing for children...
he'd have to be brain injured -
Martin Amis

a woman's bare head
a man not focused on work -
Chechnya leader

in Barcelona's streets
never a one to be seen -
Franco's monuments

after this month      nix
no more internet addresses
the protocol full

starry nights are us
say the Channel Islanders -
first Dark Sky Island

They've joined the BoGof -
Morrison's Supermarkets
their Valentine Cards

fish and mash

the rhododendrons
footprints lead to them     paws return
metamorphosis

my "aunt's" lost purse
found some weeks later by a friend
safely guarded by a fox
in its shoe box laid among
chewed gloves wet papers and old coins

3 Haiku

they know the inner life
perhaps more feebly than ourselves -
dolphins jays and chimps
breast cancer explosion
such a beautiful image
juxtaposed in the news
toppled by the wind
contents spilt      iced to the ground -
the recycle bins

2 Haiku

they swept the paths clean
and muddied the patio -
last night's wind and rain

they made themselves heard
even above the wind's noise -
the cats and foxes

3 Haiku

at dusk a clear sky
criss-crossed in a moment by
bright orange vapour trails

---

rain on top of frost
and the world transformed again -
by frozen porridge

---

homes are for profit
parking and storage are for hire
in times of recession

---

3 Haiku

doing a runner
increasingly popular -
after eating out

a silver dragon
sliding    spitting and foaming
when the river floods.

youthful unemployed
seventeen front page portraits -
smiling happily

Haiku #322

not bird song wakes me
but still lifes and lithographs -
sound lines and colour

"Found" Haiku

(lifted - almost verbatim - from a reader's letter in The Guardian.)

smokers get the nudge
tobacco companies the wink -
the health white paper

Bubble and Squeak

"Haiku" #321

They take them with them
their favourite coffin things -
mobile phones and wine

---

Heard from two small(ish) boys playing soldiers in the snow:-

1st boy : I've bombed your secret camp.

2nd boy : You couldn't 'ave, you don't know where it is.

1st boy : I do so, it was on Wicked Leaks!

---

Snow turning crimson
has buried the maple leaves
is stained by their blood

Evening Shadows

imaginations
mine and his can change a world --
sinister Jack Frost


"Haiku"  #320
They'll send a lump of coal
gift-wrapped to your least loved ones --
on-line gift firms.

Haiku and "Haiku" #319

The first fall of snow
scooping handfuls from the car-
boys whiter than white.

Now that he's famous
there's a statue to Nani -
which he has at home

Haiku #166

The eighth type of
ambiguity - used when
framing apologies

Haiku #165

The ball, the damned ball
shimmies all over the place!
complain the goalies