Last Lamp

Leaf 400 – Looking Back

 

M.C. Escher - Never Think Before You Act (1921)

Closing the ledger of ‘400 Leaves’ …

 

 

Last desk lamp

in the library

winks out.

 

 

 

Sound of Cicadas

Leaf 399 – Looking Back

 

Kobayashi Kiyochika - Looking at Evening Lights (c.1930s)

This is a haiku which I wrote during my first visit to Japan in 2003, while I was staying at a hotel (which no longer exists) overlooking Shinobazu Pond.

 

 

Wandering back to the hotel –

the sound of cicadas

in the warm night.

 

 

 

Tsuchiya Koitsu - Shinobazu Pond in Ueno (1939)

Whorl

Leaf 398 – Looking Forward

 

As the ‘400 Leaves’  project draws to a close, thoughts start to turn to new forms and rejuvenation …

 

 

Fur-flecked whorl

of a fern

waiting to unfurl.

 

 

 

Photograph Credits: Noel Nesme & Dom Sch-veg-man / Pexels

Dust Bathing

Leaf 397 – Looking Back

 

Tatsufumi Kobayashi - Passeri

When I was a child, we had an old, neglected strawberry patch beneath two very tall conifer trees in our back garden. It was mainly used by the sparrows in the summer, and I remember I always liked to see the little hollows which they created in the hard-baked earth.

 

 

Sparrows

dust bathing

in the old strawberry patch.

 

 

 

This poem was originally written and posted on Bluesky in response to a #dailyhaikuprompt: 'berry' & 'sparrow.'

Ripples

Leaf 396 – Reflections

 

Robin Maria Pedrero - Cattails And Dragonflies

I have always been fascinated by dragonflies …

 

 

Ripples on water –

two dragonflies

waltzing with the wind.

 

 

 

Sound of Leaves

Leaf 395 – Looking Back

 

Tsuchiya Koitsu - Miyajima in the Rain (c.1930s)

This poem recalls a visit to Miyajima, on a wet and misty, windless day in February 2024. See also, Leaf 312.

 

 

Sound of leaves

slow pattering

precipitation.

 

 

 

Her Mirror

Leaf 394 – Reflections

 

Bert Stern - Marilyn Monroe with a Nikon Camera (1962)

I’ve tried to place this poem in several different haiku magazines, but it’s always been rejected. I wonder if the reason for this is because it reads differently to others to how I imagine it? – In my mind’s eye it is very much linked to the poem I posted in Leaf 278, with echoes of Gloria Swanson saying “We had faces!” in ‘Sunset Boulevard’ (1950).

 

 

Polishing

the tarnished silver

of her mirror.