Shinobazu Pond 俳句

25 February 2026

Botallack Mine

Leaf 313 – Looking Back

On the rugged north coast of Cornwall there is a very picturesque view of two former engine houses, now ruins, perched on a cliff over the sea, which can be found at the old abandoned mine of Botallack. Here in the nineteenth century, copper, tin and arsenic was mined from seams which ran both inland and out under the sea. I remember visiting this place when I was a child. I also remember countless lessons at school when I was growing up about the wonders of the indomitable age of Victorian progress and the “Industrial Revolution” which forged the very greatness of Britain. Yet these ruins seemed to suggest to me that given time, nature can reclaim and eventually efface such a site of hellishly coal-blackened destruction, while we quaintly cover it over with a veil of whimsy and nostalgia.

BOTALLACK MINE

Sea salt working
a white seam into
blackened red brick.

Photograph Credits: Gareth James (top) & Rod Allday (bottom), Geograph.

24 February 2026

Mist at Miyajima

Leaf 312 – Looking Back

Kawase Hasui - Night at Miyajima (1928)

Around this time of year, in 2024, I visited Miyajima for the first time. It was a very rainy day, but the rain was gentle. There wasn’t any wind as such, only the faintest of breezes carrying the light whiteness of the fog, hanging low over the water – making it a marvellously serene experience.

Following the mist
along the shore –
Miyajima.

Kawase Hasui - Moonlight Night at Miyajima (1947)

23 February 2026

Shared Landscapes

Leaf 311 – Art Inspired

Alexandra Buckle - Woodland Edge (2020)

This poem was inspired by one of Alexandra Buckle’s prints, ‘Woodland Edge’ (2020), which very closely matches a view found on a scenic walk in the locale around my hometown on the edge of London. It’s a route which in recent years I have walked several times with my mother. On that walk – through woodland dells, down main streets and back lanes, up footbridges over railway lines, along footpaths, through parks and beside the local river which gives its name to our town – each of us shared our memories of growing up there, roaming the woods and fields thereabouts. I have always been interested in the local history of the place where I grew up. When I was a child at school, our teachers took us on a walk through the town and taught us all about the various architectural styles of buildings from different eras, from the modern back to the Elizabethan and even the medieval. Having originally been a rural village which was subsequently subsumed into London’s “Metroland” it has retained a countryside feel, and even has one working farm still. Now that I am grown up, I’ve begun to explore the town with my own family history more in mind – quizzing my mother about the places which connect us and sharing memories that link us together: me, her, my grandparents, and my great grandparents. Continuing a kind of anecdotal relay, wherein the baton of our lived past is passed down; a baton forged through time and place, a baton which has brazed those elements together to make us who we are – because family is home, and home is family. This is something which I hope the following poem manages to capture and encapsulate with far fewer words, but (hopefully) with a much deeper sense of feeling.