Alien clouds, red,
as summer fades and roses
yearn for their sunset.
——–
For haiku heights, prompt 159, Alien. Also prompted by the sunset over Warwick castle yesterday evening, while playing tennis.
Watching the sun sinking in the West,
like a middle-aged man sinking into humanity;
reddening with resignation and wine, and trailed
by fading clouds, rose-tinted
but cold.
At least the sky is blue
(which rhymes with you,
who may yet catch that falling orb
and make another dawn).
——
Posted at dVerse Open Link Evening 28 August 2012
The roses bloomed twice,
and nobody noticed but
you – who stole my heart.
———–
For Chevrefeuille’s Tackle it Tuesday prompt.
Butterfly
Morning butterfly
enjoys the warm roadside air
of a late summer.
Autumn
Funnelled clouds point south;
as Autumn falls on tired trees,
birds fly like leaves.
After the storm
This summer morning
damp; a gift from last night’s storm
making grass sparkle.
Kingfisher
Blue rising movement
makes the river-sipping trees
suddenly greener.
Pigeon
Why has that pigeon
followed me to France? Is it
obsessed with humans?
Failure
Setting out in rain
to a final appointment,
Spring was his last hope.
——
This is a collection of haiku written on holiday earlier this month. (The pigeon haiku refers to a couple I wrote earlier this year).
Like ducks, two people
on a calm lake, canoeing
in the rain, talking.
——-
On holiday with my daughter.
I tremble as you touch me,
as you run through my trees;
and I long to embrace you
with my dew-dampened leaves.
My breathing follows seasons
and my rhythms are slow;
changing light into water
for the creatures below.
And you?
You of the quick boughs and sliding roots:
you race with the sunbeats, but don’t know what you seek.
I try to speak.
Sometimes we touch – we knew each other once,
and breathed together.
I tremble as you touch me,
as you run through my trees;
and I long to embrace you,
with my dew-dampened leaves.
Working horses stand
waiting for another load
burdened by patience.
———–
At a festival of 19th century crafts in Baud, Brittany, I watched the harvesting and production of flour. There were four big draft horses providing the power, but they seemed to spend most of their time waiting.
My finger traces
cracks between your stones,
stirring mortar and memories.
It hurts, like these towers on the landscape.
Dust, like peasants, scraped onto my finger;
falling into grass and vanishing,
like all who feel this power
and maintain these static towers.
Death and decay;
slow and small,
like the sand
in my hand.
You stand still,
hurting my moving finger,
while dying.
I live.
Diving through the waves
I chased shoals of eager fish
and the sea ate me.
———–
There are few things better than swimming in clear sea water on a summer’s day.
Did they wonder, like me, I thought,
at the chiselled avenues of light between the trees
converging on their fields,
and plant these stones in awe
as neolithic poetry?
Or are these rows a show of power
to catch and hold the sun;
weaving patterns from her rays
as only master craftsmen can?
Or was it fear?
Unyielding ancestors, screaming in their heads;
guilty memories made granite flesh,
and forced at last to rest.
Today I touch the stones, warm in the sun,
and shiver.
Drawing my words and thoughts they reach through time,
silent as a neolithic clock,
and almost art, yet unstopped.
—————-
I have spent the last fortnight among the menhirs and dolmens of the 6000 year old landscape around Carnac in Brittany.
poetry diary 