Rosy-Fingered Dawn

Leaf 164 – Reflections

 

This haiku was probably written with an unconscious allusion to the ancient Greek poet, Homer, in mind (see also, Leaf 162).

 

 

West wind shepherding

rose-coloured clouds

at dawn.

 

 

 

Photograph credit: PickPik

Bell on the Buoy

Leaf 163 – Reflections

 

A short way along the coast from the village in Cornwall, where my family always used to stay for our summer holidays when I was growing up, there was a buoy. It wasn’t easy to see, but it was easy to hear. Often, the somewhat mournful sound of its bell tolling, either in the wind or from the motion of the waves, would drift across the sea and up the cliffs. You could hear it, marking time with your footfalls as you walked along the coast road. I’m not sure what the purpose was of this particular buoy, it could simply have been a channel marker or it might have been marking the site of a wreck.

 

 

Bell on the buoy

tolling the turns

of wind and wave.

 

 

 

Photograph credit: PickPik

In the Olive Grove

Leaf 162 – Art Inspired

 

This tanka was originally written and posted on Bluesky as a response to a #vssdaily poetry prompt to write a poem incorporating the word ‘olive.’ For some reason, unknown to me, the first thing that sprang to mind was an image of the ancient Greek poet, Homer:

 

 

An old man sits unseeing

in the sacred olive grove,

telling tales of war and travel;

his voice seeing all, vividly

echoing down the ages still.

 

 

 

Photograph credits: The British Museum & Pixabay

Gallery Goers

Leaf 161 – Reflections

 

Art galleries are strange places. Oddly hushed, yet echoey. They can either be almost empty on sunny days, or bustling with people when it rains. Often white cubed walls with bare floorboards, or plush interiors with marble floors. People wander round, like sleepwalkers, awkwardly clutching coats and bags. They stand staring at paintings hung on the walls, or free-standing sculptures islanded in the centre of the room. I love art galleries, but I’m often distracted by the living, breathing artforms who wander through such spaces.

 

 

GALLERY GOERS

 

Hearing

the self-conscious creak

of floorboards underfoot.

 

 

 

Photograph credit: Jim Winslet

Light & Leaves

Leaf 160 – Art Inspired

 

Linocut by Alexandra Buckle

This is another one of my ekphrastic or “art inspired” haiku. Seeing this painting, by Alexandra Buckle, reminded me of the summers when I was aged around thirteen or fourteen years old. My friends and I had new mountain bikes, with either fifteen or eighteen gears, and we were very keen to try them out “off-roading.” We used to hurtle through one of the local woods, which was enormous; not knowing where we were going, but not fearing getting lost either, such was our indomitable spirit of adventure. We had hours of fun! – As young boys we practically lived on our bikes and roamed far and wide. I had that mountain bike for many years thereafter, up until quite recently in fact. A navy blue Raleigh ‘Magnum’ with silver mud guards, kitted out with rear-wheel luggage rack, saddlebag and an electronic speed and mileometer, it served me well and was often my main mode of transport.

 

 

Light and leaves –

flashing through the wood,

boys on their bikes.

 

 

Nowadays, I prefer to explore the woods and enjoy the komorebi at a more sedate pace:

 

 

Light and leaves –

summertime strolling

through the woods.

 

 

Komorebi (Jaded in Japan)

 

Bligh's Bounty

Leaf 159 – Reflections

 

Robert Dodd - The Mutineers turning Lt. Bligh and Officers Adrift on 29 April 1789 (1790)

This is one of two maritime-themed poems which I wrote around the same time. The other one, titled: ‘The Returning Wave,’ won Oatleaf Magazine’s monthly poetry competition (July 2025). The historical theme of ‘Bligh’s Bounty’ is factual rather than fictional, although there is a large degree of fictional speculation infused within it, particularly with regard to Bligh’s thoughts and feelings (and, while he was in charge of the Bounty when the famous mutiny took place in 1789, Bligh was actually ‘Commanding lieutenant’ at that time, rather than Captain):

 

 

BLIGH’S BOUNTY

 

A small ship stuck in a smaller bottle,

brewing a tempest of dark cloud within;

rudely wrested from his sole command,

set adrift and abandoned all at sea;

Captain Bligh, muttering of misfortune

and mutiny, in an open boat nursed

across 3,500 nautical miles of dead

reckoning – by an unforgiving ego;

seething more with every swell survived,

outriding fate and rigging out for fame

as sure as the bountiful sea’s return;

Captain’s word is law, self-regarding,

he swore: “Ye shall reap as ye didst sow.”

 

 

 

John Webber - William Bligh (1775)

 This poem was originally written and posted on Bluesky in response to a #ws366 writing prompt: bounty.

Runnels & Rivulets

Leaf 158 – Reflections

 

Dmitry Levin - Grace, Luxembourg

My ancestral Anglo-Saxon has an affinity for alliteration (see, Leaf 156). I often favour it as an aural device for painting imagery with words, as in this particular poem:

 

 

Runnels and rivulets

weaving whitewater –

a leaf shooting the rapids.

 

 

Dmitry Levin - Awakening

 

Orange Peel

Leaf 157 – Art Inspired

 

Erika Lee Sears - Orange Slice (2022)

This is another one of my ekphrastic or “art inspired” haiku. It was written in response to seeing a painting, titled: ‘Orange Slice’ (2022), by Erika Lee Sears.

 

 

Waxing lyrical

over discarded

orange peel.

 

 

 

Photograph credit: Artsy / Maybaum Gallery, San Francisco

In Search of the Saxons

Leaf 156 – Looking Back

 

One of my most favourite history documentaries is Michael Wood’s “In Search of the Dark Ages” which was first broadcast between 1979-1981, (see also, Leaf 125). In which he recounts the history of England after the fall of Rome, when the old province of Britannia became the homeland of the Anglo-Saxons and laid much of the foundations for our island nation as we know it today.

 

As Michael Wood explains with such energy, enthusiasm and erudition, it is a country which has absorbed incomers for centuries and become a unique melting pot of different cultures. Yet he shows how much of it – the shires and the hundreds, the villages and towns, the roadways and earthworks, the hedges and the forests, the wealds and the downlands, and many of the market squares and churches, are an echo of that older world first-forged by the Saxon Kings. The archaeology underlying the fabric of so many of our towns and high streets, along with the words embedded in our language, and the thoughts which shape so many of our traditions are rooted in that era – the time between the Roman withdrawal and the Norman Conquest, which, when we stop to examine it, shows us so much of who we are still.

 

Michael Wood

I wrote the following poem recently while watching (for the umpteenth time!) the episode entitled, ‘In Search of Athelstan,’ the “first King of all England,” in which Wood uses a modern Ordnance Survey map and a photocopy of an Anglo-Saxon charter from 932 to retrace, physically on foot and by the keenness of his eye, the boundaries of a parcel of land of twelve hides at West Meon in Hampshire, given to Æthelgeard, one of Athelstan’s thegns or thanes (lords) – finding the bumps and hollows in the landscape, as well as the echoes still extant in the place names which the charter described. It was TV programmes such as this one when I was younger which fed my earliest interests in history and archaeology, firing my imagination and inspiring me to pursue a career working on digs and in museums for many years. But it was also Anglo-Saxon poems such as Beowulf and the Battle of Maldon (see, Leaf 113) – lyrical and alliterative – which spoke to the poet who is deep rooted in my soul. Hence, despite my love of haiku (and the Metaphysical and Romantic poets as well), I always seem to circle back eventually to sentiments of homecoming, such as these:

 

 

IN SEARCH OF THE SAXONS

 

Rising from history-hushed Rushmere

to a green leafed boundary tumuli,

along the Herepath by the long ditch;

from Fern Lea down to Curved Hollow,

following old ways, well-worn through

a half-forgotten ancestral landscape;

half-glimpsed again, undergrowth shadowed,

along fleet river and ancient hedgerow;

tracing on foot with folded map in hand

the hundreds of Athelstan’s thanes:

a wyrd kinship – still flowing in our veins.

 

 

 

Photograph credits: IMDb and Wikipedia

Moon Silvered Wheat

Leaf 155 – Art Inspired

 

Janis Goodman - Moonshine

This poem was inspired by a wonderfully evocative artwork, titled ‘Moonshine,’ created by contemporary printmaker, Janis Goodman. Seeing it reminded me of many occasions in rural Northamptonshire in the mid-1990s, when my friends and I used to stroll through wheatfields lit by the Moon in summertime after an evening relaxing at the local village pub while we were camping out in the fields nearby (see, Leaf 69). There’s something very magical and distinctly otherworldly about experiencing such a brightly lit nocturnal scene, immersed in the ethereal moonlight and its long dark dancing shadows, which is always aided happily by a few ales!

 

 

Ears of wheat

silvered by the

Harvest Moon.

 

 

 

This poem was originally posted as an #artinspired haiku on my Bluesky account.

Rice Bin

Leaf 154 – Reflections

 

Although only in my early twenties at the time, this is another from a series of poems which I wrote reflecting on loneliness and old age (see also, Leaf 153).

 

 

His eyesight and

his appetite failing

– mouse droppings

gather in the rice bin.

 

 

 

Photograph credit: Pexels

Autumn Song

Leaf 153 – Reflections

 

Although only in my early twenties at the time, this is one of a series of poems which I wrote reflecting on loneliness and old age (see also, Leaf 154).

 

 

Autumn song:

in the kitchen, one bowl

– the lonely sound of chopsticks.

 

 

 

This poem was originally published in moving into breath, edited by ai li (2002).

Photograph Credit: PickPik

Still Waters

Leaf 152 – Art Inspired

 

Claude Monet - Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies (1899) The Met

There is a little-known connection between this famous painting and Japan. It’s a relatively recent connection, which can be found in the grounds of an art gallery in Atami on the Izu peninsula, not far from Tokyo, where there is a pond which contains lilies and lily pads brought from Monet’s garden in France.

 

 

Leap-frogging lily pads,

leafy stepping stones 

– painted and real.

Bulrushes standing tall

like paintbrushes in a jar,

their bristles daubed

with the bright colours

of perched dragonflies.

Spanning space and time,

a simple wooden arch

reflected in still waters.

 

 

Reiji Hiramatsu - Monet's Pond (date unknown)

Tim Chamberlain - MOA Museum Garden, Atami, Japan (2005)

 

Remembrance of Things Past

Leaf 151 – Art Inspired

 

Henry James summed up the experience of reading Proust as one of “inconceivable boredom associated with the most extreme ecstasy which it is possible to imagine.” It took me twenty years, on and off, to read Proust’s Remembrance (more thoughts on which are posted here). It is an exquisite cathedral of a book. I’m not ready to return to it just yet, but I do sometimes wonder if I shall manage to re-read it in full at least once more in my lifetime?

 

 

à la recherche du temps perdu

 

a bubble,

gently rising

to the surface.

 

 

 

This poem was originally published in still 5: four (2001).

Photographs by Tim Chamberlain.

The Egg

Leaf 150 – Looking Back

 

Following on from Leaf 149, this poem was another originally published in still 3: four (1999). Even now, all these years later, I’m still not fully sure what it means. Thinking back, I seem to recall it was prompted by ‘a haiku moment’ which came to me while I was actually cooking an egg – probably making one of my eponymous “East Ham Sandwiches” (honey roast ham and an egg, fried on both sides but with the yolk still partly liquid; with salt, black pepper and ketchup, between buttered white bread), which I used to live on when I was a student living in London’s East Ham! – Looking back through this edition of still, I see this poem was also the “Editor’s Choice” for that issue.

 

 

In the frying pan

the egg –

 

making up a mind

that was never made.

 

 

 

Photographs by Tim Chamberlain.

Autumn Pavilion

Leaf 149 – Looking Back

 

This poem was originally published in still 3: four (1999), which was several years before I first went to China. Consequently, I think I must have written it originally with an English seafront promenade or suburban park pavilion in mind. But I distinctly recall this poem coming to mind again when I was in Beijing a few years later, in the summer of 2006, where I came across an ornate wooden painted pavilion in one of the parks there (possibly the Temple of Heaven, or somewhere nearby). There I came across a group of elderly folk, resting in the shade. It was a heavy, strength-sappingly hot and smoggy afternoon. I joined them for a while, and, although not quite autumn yet, I sat there thinking of how I had seemingly wandered into one of my own poems!

 

 

Autumn –

resting on the Pavilion.

Photographs by Tim Chamberlain

Alone, In Company

Leaf 148 – Reflections

 

Kajita Hanko - A Nap (1906)

I think it’s often a common mistake to assume that those who like to be alone tend to eschew other people’s company. Solitude and loneliness are two different, but not entirely disassociated things. It’s equally as possible to feel lonely in a crowd, just as it is when we are far from the company of others. And likewise, it’s entirely possible to miss someone when they are not there, even while we might be enjoying the state of being by ourselves. The people who we know and love to a large degree make us who we are, therefore it stands to reason that they are always with us, even when we are apart. And none moreso than our nearest and dearest. We carry them with us, wherever we go.

 

 

Enjoying a quiet day

without his wife –

but wishing she was there. 

Beeswax

Leaf 147 – Reflections

 

Some men like to polish their Ferraris, but not me. This poem is about the desk on which I have done pretty much all my writing from the age of fifteen to fifty (so far). It’s followed me faithfully to almost all of the places where I’ve lived since first leaving home, including the last move of some 9000+ miles – halfway round the world.

 

 

Smell of beeswax –

polishing the desk

my parents gave me.

 

 

 

 

Photographs by Tim Chamberlain.

Windswept Pine

Leaf 146 – Art Inspired

 

This poem was probably written with Saigyō’s famous poem about a pine tree at Shiogoshi half in mind. Bashō states that: ‘Should anyone dare to write another poem on this pine tree, it would be like trying to add a sixth finger to his hand.’* – So, on second thoughts, I think my poem must be about another pine tree!

 

 

Arched like a wave,

a wind-sculpted pine

extends all its fingers.

 

 

 

*Matsuo Bashō, The Narrow Road to the Deep North and other travel sketches, translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa (Penguin, 1966), p. 138. Yuasa’s translation of Saigyō’s poem:

 

Inviting the wind to carry

Salt waves of the sea,

The pine tree of Shiogoshi

Trickles all night long

Shiny drops of moonlight.

 

 

Photograph credit: Bonsais South Africa

Two Candles

Leaf 145 – Remembrance

 

Gerhard Richter - Two Candles (1982)

This poem records a sight which I saw, looking down from the top deck of a bus on Tottenham Court Road in London, on 11 September 2001.

 

 

All the televisions

in the shop window

– people stop walking.

 

 

 

This poem was first published on the website of still (2001), which is now archived here.

Seven Pips

Leaf 144 – Senryu (or, witty tom-foolery)

 

The Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, London (Camilla Greenwell)

Following on from my previous poem about the Proms (see Leaf 143), this senryu recalls an amusing memory from a concert at the Royal Festival Hall, overlooking the River Thames on London’s Southbank. When I lived in London, I used to be a regular concert-goer in the audience of the very excellent Philharmonia Orchestra. I forget what the piece of music was on this particular occasion, but I recall becoming fascinated by one member of the wind section, who seemed to be sitting there with his arms folded, doing absolutely nothing throughout each successive movement as the symphony was being played around him, until …

 

 

After an hour

amid the orchestra

– seven pips on a piccolo!

 

 

Grand Opening

Leaf 143 – Reflections

 

Founded in 1895, The Proms – short for ‘promenade concert’ – is a summer festival of classical music held every year at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Since 1927 the concerts have been broadcast by the BBC, and in recent years the music has been diversified beyond classical music to include other genres as well. Given its long history the festival has developed a number of quirky traditions. One such example is when the grand piano is rolled out onto the stage and the lid is lifted, which prompts a spontaneous call and response which the ‘Prommers’ or ‘Promenaders’ (ordinary concert goers) make – a moment captured in this little poem:

 

 

Grand opening –

Promenaders calling

“heave, ho!”

 

 

Pianist Yuja Wang (photograph by Kylie Northover)

Uncertainty

Leaf 142 – Reflections

 

Illustration by Kiuchi Tatsuro

This is another one of those poems which seem to present themselves to me almost fully-formed in both English and Japanese. But, as always, I’m not 100% sure how well my Japanese version works – which is perhaps somewhat appropriate in this particular instance.

 

 

不確かさ夏の初めて蝉の声

futashika sa | natsu no hajimete | semi no koe

uncertainty | summer of first time | cicada(s) of voice

 

 

Sounding uncertain –

summer’s first

cicadas.

 

 

Koishikawa Korakuen #4 & #5

Leaf 141 – Garden Poems

 

These are the fourth and fifth poems in my sequence on Koishikawa Kōrakuen Gardens (see also, Leaf 108, Leaf 109, & Leaf 110).

 

The first of these two poems is almost a gembun, or perhaps it’s merely a haiku with a ‘prescript’ – I’m unsure. Although, in this instance, the prescript doesn’t really explain the context of the poem – so perhaps it is better to read it as a gembun. The first line could easily be read as part of the ensuing verse. It was inspired by a genuine sight which in turn prompted a chain of thoughts and associations to flow, threading parallel lines through and in response to the moment. While standing on a path, looking down into the placid water of the big pond of Kōrakuen, which had a colour and cloudy-consistency rather like green tea, I watched a tortoise swimming in a manner which suggested pure enjoyment. Unhurried and without holding to any particular course – in contrast to another tortoise which I saw later, who was swimming very determinedly in a straight line and at speed – this chap was idly drifting as though he or she were simply savouring the sensation of free-floating and just bobbing around, enjoying the feeling of buoyancy and the coolness of the water under the bright warmth of the sun. When I swim, this is how I like to swim too.

 

 

All the time in the world:

 

A tortoise –

takes a leisurely swim,

in a jade-green universe.

 

 

Just behind me, beside the path, I next noticed a curious rock. The striations in the green rock seemed to mirror my vision of the pond behind me and the scatter of white quartz crystals within it seemed to echo my mental association of only a moment ago, seeing the tortoise floating in the water in a manner which suggested a certain idea of space and time, with the star clusters of the Milky Way tracing a path through the void, like the lines in the bark, lines in water. Somehow the two things seemed intimately connected. All things, we are told, are essentially born out of star dust. Hence, recalling the Buddha seeking enlightenment while seated quietly beneath the Bodhi Tree. In that instant, I realised I had two poems. Two snapshots in time, and two thoughts which were essentially one.

 

 

White quartz –

scattered in green stone,

centred at the foot of a tree.

 

 

 

Photographs by Tim Chamberlain