Happy Halloween

Leaf 195 – Senryu (or witty, tom-foolery)

 

Ethan James Green - Kate Moss wearing Vivienne Westwood
for Dazed Magazine (2016)

If you can’t be good, then you best be bad … Happy Halloween, Daahlings!

 

 

A black ant –

emerges from the eye

of a Jack o’ lantern.

 

 

  

Jack o' lantern image credit: Unsplash

Cicadas!

Leaf 194 – Looking Back

 

Kawase Hasui - Night at the Pond Edge [Shinobazu Pond] (1932)

I wrote this haiku during my first trip to Japan in October 2003. The accompanying shin-hanga prints by Kawase Hasui and Tsuchiya Koitsu, both from the 1930s, capture the scene almost exactly as I remember it, only the trees weren’t yet quite so bare of their leaves.

 

 

Moon over Shinobazu Pond

– cicadascicadascicadas!

 

 

 

Tsuchiya Koitsu - Ueno Park [Shinobazu Pond] (1935)

Last Sunset

Leaf 193 – Looking Back

 

Tim Chamberlain - Malta Sunset (October 2014)

Following on from Leaf 192, I think this haiku captures a sentiment which most people will be able to relate to. I wrote it with a particular time and place in mind. The place was the island of Malta, which is steeped in history. Having just completed my Masters degree in 2014, I rewarded myself by spending a week travelling solo, exploring historical sites connected to the island’s prehistoric, medieval, and Second World War eras. I had a fantastic and fascinating time, so much so that on my last night there I sat on the cliffs overlooking the sea, watching the sunset – which I photographed (see above), while very much wishing I didn’t have to go home.

 

 

Different sigh,

last sunset

of the holiday.

 

 

 

This haiku was originally written and posted as a response to a #dailyhaikuprompt on Bluesky.

For more on my trip to Malta, see my other blog: Waymarks

Sea & Sky

Leaf 192 – Art Inspired

 

J.M.W. Turner - Sea and Sky (c.1825-1830) Tate Britain

Another experiment in my on-going side project of #artinspired haiku. This poem was written as a response to a Bluesky writing prompt: ‘Ekphrastic Skies.’ For which I chose J.W.M. Turner’s watercolour, ‘Sea and Sky’ (c.1825-1830). Although it was also inspired by a real sunset which I saw and photographed on the last night of a memorable trip I made to the island of Malta in 2014 (see, Leaf 193).

 

In this poem, I consciously wanted the haiku to be split into two equal halves, and also three thirds (or three levels), as a means of representing the visual image/experience of seeing the sun setting into the sea (i.e. – the thin, sun-scorched line of the horizon bisecting sea and sky; as well as the sky, the sun, the sea) mirrored in the actual structure of the haiku itself.

 

This is the final version of the poem, as it was originally posted on Bluesky:

 

 

Slipping into

the sea, the sun

brazing the sky.

 

 

But there is also another version of this poem (see below) which is a little more minimalist, or perhaps a more conventionally-stylised modern English haiku (hence I’ve consciously eschewed my usual R.H. Blyth-like capitalisation and proper punctuation). I’m not 100% sure now which of the two poems was written first, but this other, less wordy version was probably the result of me thinking over and wrestling with the process of brazing, and trying to work out whether the sun was brazing sky to sea or sea to sky, or whether or not the distinction even matters given that the sun seemed to be melting between the two. As such, I’m still undecided as to which version works best.

 

In essence, while different and separate works, they are also, to certain extents, simultaneously the same poem – and that’s why I’ve decided to present both on this particular leaf. I suppose it is up to the reader to decide for themselves which of the two has the greater appeal.

 

 

brazing

sky and sea

– the setting sun

 

 

 

India Ink

Leaf 191 – Reflections

 

This poem reflects upon a haiku moment from many years ago when I saw a woman wearing a long black leather coat walking through London’s Marylebone Station. It’s an attempt to capture a perception of elegance in motion, the soft play of white light and jet dark material, each confounding one another with the confidence of those footfalls purposefully striding across the Station concourse. A woman moving with the liquid ease and fluidity of a shining black brushstroke creating a beautiful sumi-e painting.

 

 

A long fluid luminous sheen

flowing about her form – 

like India ink.

 

 

Photograph credits: The End Cult / Glory Connection

Afterlife in Amber

Leaf 190 – Senryu (or witty, tom-foolery)

 

Frauke Stebner - Mosquito in Amber

This poem was loosely inspired by the fact that Tutankhamun, like many of his contemporary ancient Egyptians, is known to have suffered from malaria and that this mosquito-borne disease may have contributed to his early demise, although the actual cause of his death is still debated. The poem’s playful suggestion that a drop of the young Pharoah’s blood (and, with it, his DNA) may well have survived him by the simple chance process of a mosquito which had bitten him later becoming preserved in amber, inadvertently guaranteeing him a kind of naturally mummified afterlife, was something which appealed to my wry sense of irony – given the extreme lengths which the ancient Egyptians went to in order to preserve their dead. The idea of the great Pharoah and the lowly mosquito each finding their place in eternity in this manner, with their fates combined together as one, seemed to me to be a neatly rounded one – embodying that old, ancient Egyptian Hermetic Gnosticism: “as above, so it is below,” as it were.

 

 

Pharoah’s bloodline,

embalmed in amber –

mosquito’s afterlife assured.

 

 

Howard Carter examining Tutankamun (1925)

Blue Period

Leaf 189 – Art Inspired

 

Norman Rockwell - The Connoisseur (1962)

I often wonder if there is a greater art in the elaborate speculation of art critics than there is in the original intentions of the artist; though both, perhaps, should be seen equally as expressions of the unconscious?

 

 

Blue period –

cutting down

a larger canvas.

 

 

 

The Old Shed

Leaf 188 – Reflections

 

Monika Kinner - From Humble Beginnings (2013)

This poem was written in response to a #haikufeels prompt on Bluesky to write a haiku incorporating the word: ‘recur.’ I hid the word in the poem’s third line, although it’s also alluded to in the first.

 

 

Time and again –

the old shed where

kippers were cured.

 

 

 

Temple Bell

Leaf 187 – Reflections

 

Kazu Saitou - Star Corridor

Somewhere, far off along the upper reaches of the Tamagawa this evening, my heart thinks it can feel a deep resounding chime – as solid wood, strikes solid bronze.

 

 

Temple bell –

leaves shimmering,

starlight.

 

 

Kazu Saitou - The Constellations of Summer

 

Small Boats

Leaf 186 – Reflections

 

Arvid Johansson - Fishing Boat at Sunset (1901)

Sometimes, the most relaxing thing is simply to watch the rhythms of tide and time.

 

 

Small boats

rise and fall

with the tide.

 

***

 

Drawing

lines in the sand

– mooring ropes.

 

 

Norman Garstin - A View of Mount's Bay with the North Pier (c.1920)
Penlee House Gallery & Museum

 

Bamboo Rule

Leaf 185 – Reflections

 

Over robe (uchikake) with chrysanthemums, butterflies, and sheaves of rice straw,
19th Century, Japan (The Met)

A couple of months ago we took a long roll of printed fabric to a local tailor. It was fascinating to watch him at work. His fingers nimbly measuring, while his mind made careful calculations, following the exactness of his expert eye. All the time, amiably chatting away about his chosen craft.

 

 

End to end –

watching the kimono-maker

work his bamboo rule.

 

 

Toshi Yoshida - Amagasa, or Umbrella (1940)

 

Penny Arcade Lights

Leaf 184 – Reflections

 

Kazuyuki Sutoh - Full Moon

There is something very beautiful about the stillness of the sea on a warm summer’s night.

 

 

Far out

on a calm sea,

penny arcade lights.

 

 

 

Day Moon

Leaf 183 – Looking Back

 

Iwami Reika - Spirit of Water (2005)

Once, when I was very young, my mother remembers I asked her why on some days the Moon forgot to go to bed …

 

 

Refusing to day-dream,

the Moon stays

wide awake.

 

 

 

Pulp Fictions

Leaf 182 – Looking Back

 

Pulp Fiction (1994)

It’s true. You often don’t realise how good things are until they’re gone …

 

 

Longing to escape

without realizing

we were already

living in the best

of all possible worlds.

 

 

Trainspotting (1996)

 

Shattered Celadon

Leaf 181 – Reflections

 

Dmitry Levin - Emerald Summer (2019)

Celadon is an elegant light-green glazed form of ceramic. Kintsugi is the art of repairing broken ceramics with gold. Komorebi is a Japanese word which describes both the visual appearance and the feeling of seeing sunlight filtering through fresh green leaves (see, Leaf 160). One day, while I was in a car, driving with my family here in Japan in early summer, I happened to look out of the window when we came to a stop at a traffic light. At that moment, looking out into a stand of trees by the side of the road, all of the images and thought sensations contained within this short, little verse suddenly seemed to come together. It was a moment of perfect clarity. A haiku moment, distilled into a fully-formed poem, then and there.

 

 

Shattered celadon

with kintsugi-fused seams

– komorebi.

 

 

Fuyukitaru - Edo Period Celadon Bowl with Ornate Gold Repairs (Reddit)

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

Beneath Shimmering Waters

Leaf 173 – Art Inspired

 

Priscilla Watkins - Painting from the 'Brockwell Lido' series

Another of my many #artinspired poems. This one came to me after a painting by Priscilla Watkins (from her ‘Brockwell Lido’ series) evoked a memory of seeing a friend of mine swimming underwater in the pool of a hotel in Cairo, way back in the summer of 1992. This remarkable painting looks almost like a real photo. I feel like I have so many photograph-like moments such as this one preserved in my mind. Memories which can transport us back in time in an instant.

 

 

Watching her sleek form

slip gracefully by

beneath shimmering waters.

 

 

Eating Toast with Tori

Leaf 172 – Art Inspired

 

Tori Amos - Under the Pink (1994)

Tori Amos’s ‘Under the Pink’ (1994) was one of those albums which I played over and over when it first came out. That and her first album, ‘Little Earthquakes’ (1992), were among my favourites – along with other contemporary albums by Pearl Jam, REM, INXS, U2, Crowded House, Suede, and James. These were the bands who defined my teenage years during the 1990s. I must have bought the single, ‘Cornflake Girl’, before I bought the album. It featured the song, ‘Sister Janet’, as its b-side. The lyrics of ‘Cornflake Girl’ reminded me of my own primary school; in the playground of which, aged around five years old, we all wanted to be in the Bee Gang. Eventually I got to be in the Bee Gang, and was supremely disappointed to find out that there was little more to being in the Bee Gang than simply being able to say you were in the Bee Gang. An early bathetic awakening of sorts in the manifold mysteries of human life exposed for the fraud-like shams which they always essentially are, perhaps? – Hence, the cryptic lyrics of Amos’s songs appealed to me. One critic in the NME at the time described listening to ‘Under the Pink’ as like “being locked inside a semantic castle.” Enchanting, obscure, dark and light, sinister and yet playful – it seemed to me to glint like a poetic mirror ball slowly turning in my mind. One line from ‘Sister Janet’ though always pops into my mind whenever I am making breakfast and always makes me smile, because I still don’t fully fathom what it might actually mean …

 

 

TOAST

 

Every morning –

I hum in my head

a Tori Amos tune,

while slipping a buttered

blade in the marmalade.

 

 

The Wren

Leaf 171 – Art Inspired

 

Liza Adamczewski - Garden Icons: Singing for his Supper

This is another of my #artinspired haiku. I wrote it after seeing this magical painting by contemporary artist, Liza Adamczewski, from her ‘Garden Icons’ series. It reminded me of the times when I’ve seen wren’s flitting about the undergrowth and heard their distinctive song. It is amazing that such a tiny bird is capable of creating so many decibels, but it is always an unfailing delight to hear them. Especially on a cold winter’s morning.

 

 

Small yet

sonorous –

the wren exhales.

 

 

Winter Wren Song - Recorded by Garth McElroy, 2011.

 

Oliver Wright - Wren (2021) Nature Picture Library

The Rose Bush

Leaf 170 – Looking Back

 

Like my mother and my grandparents before me, I’ve always been fond of gardening.

 

 

Alas, the rose bush

that followed us from

grandmother’s garden

to mother’s garden –

unable to emigrate with me.

 

 

 

Photograph by Tim Chamberlain

Pine Cones from Kew

Leaf 169 – Looking Back

 

Very nearly ten years on now … It was far too cold a day to be wandering around Kew Gardens, but the concert hall that evening was nice and warm.

 

 

Pine cones from Kew –

first date souvenirs,

beside our wedding photo.

 

 

 

Photograph by Tim Chamberlain

Three Copper Pennies

Leaf 168 – Art Inspired

 

I have a secret soft spot for the songs of Frank Sinatra. They’re great to sing-a-long to. This poem was written and originally posted on Bluesky (or, should that be, “ole Blue Skies”?!) in response to a #FromOneLine prompt to write a poem starting with the line “Three copper pennies.” Naturally, the first thing which sprang to mind was that fountain:

 

 

Three copper pennies,

somewhere in Rome –

a busker sings Sinatra.

 

 

Frank Sinatra - Three Coins in the Fountain (1954)

 

Photograph source: Royalty Exchange