Memento Mori

Leaf 180 – Reflections

Bernie Wrightson - Illustration for 'Frankenstein' by Mary Shelley (1976)

 

In a sense, this haiku is a more succinct version of much a longer poem which I wrote after a visit I made to Abney Park Cemetery in London’s Stoke Newington in 2023. Abney Park is one of London’s “magnificent seven” Victorian cemeteries, now very Romantically and picturesquely overgrown. The date on which I visited happened to be a very serendipitous one, given the chance discovery I made when my eye was caught by a familiar name on one of the headstones (You can read more about this, along with the longer poem, on my other blog here). More generally though, I am always struck by the Victorian’s overly elaborate memorialisation of death, and how not even these large and sometimes quite melodramatic monuments have stood the test of time as they were presumably originally intended to do. Seeing them looking so dishevelled and lopsided today, I can’t help wondering what the Victorians would make of our forgetful neglect which has allowed Mother Nature to reclaim such places. I wonder if they’d be appalled, or if such desuetude might in fact conform to our received ideas of their gloomy, Gothic expectations?

 

 

Ivy embracing

an engraved headstone

in loving memory.

 

 

Zigs1 - Cissies Headstone (2007) Flickr

 

This poem was originally written and posted on Bluesky in response to a #haikufeels prompt: engrave.

Rose Head

Leaf 179 – Senryu (or witty, tom-foolery)

 

Continuing with the theme of ‘Roses’ from Leaf 178.

 

 

A rose head

tilts and falls

from the spout.

 

 

 

Photograph credit: Rawpixel

Scent of a Rose

Leaf 178 – Art Inspired

 

Paul Cezanne - Roses in a Bottle (1904)

This is another #artinspired haiku. We often have a vase of cut flowers on our kitchen table, hence this watercolour by Paul Cezanne, ‘Roses in a Bottle’ (1904) prompted for me an early morning memory of home. A more abstract reading, however, could very simply inspire all sorts of speculation.

 

 

Kitchen table

at dawn –

scent of a rose.

 

 

 

Lunar Line

Leaf 177 – Reflections

 

Harry Wingfield - Moonlight (1970)

If you have ever looked at the Moon through a telescope, or even through binoculars, there is nothing more fascinating than watching that slowly advancing line which marks the difference between lunar day and night.

 

 

Silver shine / obsidian black,

the line moving into

earth/moon occultation.

 

 

B. Murphy - Southern Hemisphere Lunar Terminator: Six Day Moon (29 April 2020)

 

Cherry Reds

Leaf 176 – Looking Back

 

Paul Talling (Derelict London) - London Street Art, Leake Street, SE1

Growing up in the 1990s, we all had a pair. But hers were different …

 

 

Remembering

her cherry red

Doc Martens.

 

 

Dan Eldon - Deziree Sex Safaris

 

This poem was originally written and posted on Bluesky in response to a #dailyhaikuprompt (cherries).

Orange & Blue

Leaf 175 – Reflections

 

C.F. Tunnicliffe - Kingfisher (What to Look for in Summer, 1960)

There’s nothing quite like catching a glimpse of a kingfisher flying at speed close to water when out walking in the countryside. It’s something else altogether to see them diving for fish. I’ve seen kingfishers so many times in the English countryside on rivers and canals, but the most recent time I spotted a kingfisher flying in this rapid rapier-like manner was astonishingly enough in the urban centre of built-up Tokyo, at Koishikawa Korakuen! (see, Leaf 108).

 

 

A bright flash

of orange and blue,

darts over green water.

 

 

Gnomon

Leaf 174 – Reflections

 

This poem is about a remarkably long and slender icicle which I once saw while I was travelling in Switzerland during the winter. It was at a town, somewhere up in the mountains. I’d never seen such deep snow drifts before. But looking at this single very long icicle glinting in the sun, slowly dripping from the eaves of a tall building – it seemed rather menacing. Hanging there like the sword of Damocles. I couldn’t stop myself imagining it suddenly falling and impaling someone below – bringing their life to a rather sudden and gruesome end, like Father Brennan in the horror film, ‘The Omen’ (1976). But as I watched, the icicle did nothing more than gleam and occasionally drip in the sunlight. In a sense, I began to see this as sinister in a different way altogether. It suddenly seemed to take on a more profound and poignant, symbolic connotation. If one viewed the long icicle and its shadow as a kind of natural sundial, it now seemed to me that (through a simple process of environmental attrition) it was actually counting down, very slowly but inevitably, towards a greater, global catastrophe.

 

 

GNOMON

 

Shadow shortening – 

icicle drips from

the eaves.

 

 

This haiku was originally written and posted on Bluesky in response to a #vssdaily writing prompt: 'ice.'

Photograph credits: HippoPX & HippoPX