poetry diary

I rhyme to see myself, to set the darkness echoing. (Seamus Heaney, from Personal Helicon)

Category: Poems

August 27, 2012

Holiday haiku

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).

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August 27, 2012

Lac de Guerledan

Like ducks, two people
on a calm lake, canoeing
in the rain, talking.

——-

On holiday with my daughter.

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August 27, 2012

Song of the Forest

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.

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August 23, 2012

Fete des Vieux Metiers, Baud 15 8 12

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.

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August 22, 2012

Castle

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.

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August 21, 2012

Haiku – Carnac Plages 11 August 2012

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.

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August 20, 2012

Carnac

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.

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August 19, 2012

Cecile Corbel in Concert – Poul Fetan 10 August 2012

Through a darkening sky
the harp draws each star, gently,
as an opening heart.

—————-

This is a haiku prompted by a magical evening spent listening to Celtic harpist Cecile Corbel perform in the open air on a still evening on a hillside in Brittany, France. The venue was a restored village from the 19th century, Poul Fetan.

I went with my two teenage children, and having started with a clear blue sky, afterwards the sky was full of more stars than I’d ever seen (and completely clear of clouds) – we followed a mysterious line of lanterns through some woods to the next field, and it was full of astronomers with telescopes: we looked at the stars and saw galaxies and nebulas as never before. Wonderful.

My French is not very confident, but I’ve also had a go at translating my haiku while still in holiday mode:

Par le ciel qui s’assombrit,
la harpe attire chaque étoile doucement;
comme un coeur qu’ouvre.

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July 24, 2012

I am a beach

I can feel the tide has turned, at last.
The sound of breakers changed, relaxed.
Impressions in the sand, half-dried, now fill.
Seabirds watching crabs, still proud, must rise.
Beachcombers head for home;
the wide bay becomes blue;
stern wavelets kiss the wall;
you can hear the seagulls call;
and my shifting spirit is renewed,
at last.

———————

Posted on dVerse, April 2013

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July 19, 2012

Moods

Optimism’s blue, like a Spring sky,
and pessimism heavy grey, like a draught horse’s breath in winter
after ploughing’s over.

I look out to summer skies;
grey clouds on blue –
and long for change.

Reflective moods,
then snorting like a draught horse,
and turning back to work.

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