Salt & Iron

Leaf 387 – Looking Back

 

Tim Chamberlain - Moorings, Newlyn (1999)

This is another of my poems about the fishing port of Newlyn in Cornwall, where I spent most of my summer’s while growing up.

 

 

Scent of salty air

and corroding iron –

fishing boats at rest.

 

 

 

Above the Rooftops

Leaf 386 – Reflections

 

Ueno Keisei Juraku Building (c.1950s)

I am a big fan of the railways in Japan, but the ‘Bullet Train’ really is in a league of its own.

 

 

Gliding above the rooftops

– the Shinkansen

leaving the city.

 

 

 

Evening Air

Leaf 385 – Looking Back

 

Margaret Preston - Sydney Heads (1925)

This poem pairs neatly with Leaf 276, which is also about the years when I was lucky enough to live right by the River Thames.

 

 

Warm evening air

on the water –

low tide.

 

 

 

Robinson Crusoe

Leaf 384 – Looking Back

 

I first read Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’ (1719) when I was fifteen years old. Nearing fifty last year, I re-read it again for a second time. And, on one particular occasion while doing so, I found myself thinking about how much my life had transformed between those two readings. Somehow, that context seemed oddly apt ...

 

 

At the Immigration Office –

sitting reading

Robinson Crusoe.

 

 

 

Photographs by Tim Chamberlain

Summer Haze

Leaf 383 – Art Inspired

 

This sketch by an unknown British artist (part of an ‘Album of Miscellaneous Etchings’ by various artists, dating from 1637-1824, now in the Tate Gallery), reminds me of the trees at the edge of Harrow Weald, near where I grew up in the UK. It also makes me think of the pastoral poems of John Clare.

 

 

Sat

beneath the tree –

summer haze.

 

 

 

Nightingale

Leaf 382 – Art Inspired

 

Joseph Severn - John Keats (c.1821) National Portrait Gallery

Sometime in May 1819, while living in Hampstead, John Keats wrote his ‘Ode to a Nightingale.’ (See also, Leaf 11 and Leaf 12).

 

 

Amid beechen green,

summer sings o’er

the Vale of Health.

 

Long gone,

but echoing still –

light-winged song.

 

Dreams passing on,

soft incense drifts

through the boughs.

 

 

 

This sequence of linked verse was originally written and posted on Bluesky in response to a #dailyhaikuprompt: 'nightingale.'

The Hush

Leaf 381 – Reflections

 

Janis Goodman - Heronry (2022)

Whenever I watch a heron, I can’t help feeling that they are creatures who somehow exist outside of time – or, at least, as we experience it. This haiku was written last autumn.

 

 

Adding to the hush

unmoving –

a heron’s eye.

 

 

 

 

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