Spiral Galaxies

Leaf 316 – Reflections

 

Astronomy has always fascinated me, ever since I was a young boy, but sadly I’ve spent most of my life living in places which are far too light-polluted to really get the best out of it as a hobby.

 

 

Vast spiral galaxies –

points of light slowly spinning,

eyes lost in the night sky.

 

 

 

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

Photograph Credit: Hubble/NASA/ESA (Wikipedia)

Silver Flashes

Leaf 315 – Reflections

 

Some things can only be heard with the eyes.

 

Swift silver flashes

moving sharp and fast

– filleting sardines.

 

 

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

Photograph by Tim Chamberlain

After Rain

Leaf 314 – Reflections

 

Kasamatsu Shiro - Jinda-ji in May (c.1954)

Some things can only be seen with the ears.

 

After rain –

frog songs fill

the evening air.

 

 

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.

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)

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.

 

 

On a walk through

the landscape of

our childhoods –

 

my mother and me.

 

 

 

Like A Lemon

Leaf 310 – Reflections

 

Vicki McGrath - Lemons

All too often, sadly …

 

 

Like a lemon

trying to laugh –

the joke sours.

 

 

 

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

Wild Rose

Leaf 309 – Reflections

 

Hiroshi Anzai - Rose (Toho Art)

“A rose by any other name …”

 

 

Wild rose –

svelte petals

protected by thorns.

 

 

 

This poem was originally written and posted on Bluesky in response to a #dailyhaikuprompt: 'wild rose.'

A Lost Glove

Leaf 308 – Reflections

 

Patrick O'Brien - Night Steam at Bristol Temple Meads (1964)

When haiku meets film noir … Strangers passing in the night.

 

 

A lost glove

in a railway carriage –

scent of cinders and steam.

René Gruau - The Black Glove (c.1950)

 

Water Drops

Leaf 307 – Looking Back

 

The Algarve: February, 1984. – In recollection, some holidays remain with us all our lives …

 

 

Water drops

glistening –

they emerge from the pool.

 

  

Photo Credits: Armacao de Pera Facebook Group / Jose Anibal Martins & Bruno Santos

Autumn Sour

Leaf 306 – Reflections

 

Traditionally pickles were a way of ensuring a vital nutritional supply of vitamins during the long dark months of winter. Another plus point, of course, is that they are also a tasty treat. I’ve always felt that a little magic gets released whenever a new jar is cracked open.

 

 

Autumn sour –

sweetening the crunch

of new pickles.

 

 

 

 

Photograph Credit: Polina Tankilevitch/Pexels

Happy Hour Again

Leaf 305 – Senryu (or, witty tom-foolery)

 

A genuine haiku moment if ever there was one! – Just the other day, ordering a beer in a bar without knowing …

 

 

My beer,

minus 200 yen

– happy hour.

 

 

 

 

This senryu was originally posted on Bluesky.

Her High Heels

Leaf 304 – Art Inspired

 

Henri Cartier-Bresson - Martines Legs (1968)

Another of my “art inspired” haiku – this time drawing upon an image created by the famous black and white photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson.

 

 

Sound of her

high heels, leading me

a merry dance.

 

 

 

 

Belinda Carlisle - Belinda (1986)

This poem was originally written and posted on Bluesky in response to a #dailyhaikuprompt (footsteps).

Standing Stone

Leaf 303 – Reflections

 

One of the things which has always fascinated me about Cornwall in the far southwest of Britain is its geology. The scent of stone and vegetation carried by the sea air is delicious whatever the weather’s mood might be (see, Leaf 219). From dusty iron-stained slate to rugged grey granite, seaside cottages with stout and sturdy walls built of the latter and roofed with the former, all the way back to the prehistoric dolmens and stone circles, to the moorlands dotted with boulders and tors, and beaches heaped with round, sea-smoothed pebbles – stone in one form or another seems to be everywhere in Cornwall. The following poem was written with a standing stone, known locally as the Blind Fiddler, in mind. Gazing closely at its pitted surface, splashed with dry, encrusted colours like a painter’s neglected palette – it appears like another world, tropical and alien; like some other, far-away planet defined in microcosm. It’s impossible not to think of time, in terms of its unfathomable span, whether pondering relatively recent prehistory or winding the cycles of the Earth’s geological clock back far farther still, as something beyond our ken, but intimately akin to all that we are: stones and stardust, or bones and boulder-rust, transmuted by slow time.

 

 

A close bond

etched over centuries –

lichen covered rock.

 

 

 

 

Photographs of the Blind Fiddler by Tim Chamberlain

Wild Flowers

Leaf 302 – Reflections

 

Illustration of leaf and flower morphology for
Ophrys apifera (left) and Ophrys fuciflora (right)

A few years ago, given the worrying decline in the bee population in the UK, my parents decided to let their front lawn do its own thing for a change. The result was almost as if the universe had decided to reward them.

 

 

Leaving the lawn unmown –

a bee orchid

amid the wild flowers.

 

 

 

 

Autumn Smiles

Leaf 301 – Looking Back

 

Every now and then, I like to set myself challenges. A few years ago, I decided to see if I could go for a whole year without buying any bread. Instead, I would bake my own. Most often I would make a white loaf, but every now and then I would treat myself and make a walnut loaf instead. Nothing beats the smell and the taste of freshly baked bread, especially when it is comes from the hard work of your own two hands.

 

 

Autumn smiles –

toasted walnut bread

dipped in honey.

 

 

 

 

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

Photograph Credit: Marta Dzedyshko/Pexels

In Clover

Leaf 300 – Reflections

 

Mana Aki - South Wind [南の風 Minami kaze] (2000)

I think this poem speaks adequately enough for itself …

 

 

Content

with three leaves –

in clover.

 

 

 

 

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

Photograph credit: Jaded in Japan

Kitchen Window

Leaf 299 – Looking Back

 

Brynhild Parker - Interior (1930)

This is a poem about my old flat in Stoke Newington (see, Leaf 288 to Leaf 292). Of all our senses, I think sound, scent, and sometimes taste, have the power to convey the most evocative echoes of the past. The chimes mentioned below now hang by our front door, here in Tokyo.

 

 

Recalling the soft sound

of wind chimes, hanging

in my old kitchen window.

 

 

 

 

Homeward, Harrow

Leaf 298 – Looking Back

 

Harrow in Prose and Verse by Warner (1913)

Suffice to say this poem is about my hometown. More than that I cannot really say, other than it seems to make sense to me. Although what it’s actually attempting to say, I’m not really 100% sure.

 

 

Heading back to Harrow:

 

            A sky –

askance

a spire.

 

 

 

 

St. Mary's, Harrow - seen from Kennet House (1948)

Question Unanswered

Leaf 297 – Looking Back

 

Archibald George Barnes - The Red Lacquer Cabinet

How many of us are forever haunted by a single moment of indecision?

 

 

9^th FEBRUARY 1995

 

Asking a question

I never answered

that could have

changed the course

of both our lives.

 

 

 

 

“Qui de nous n’a eu sa terre promise, son jour d’extase et sa fin en exil?” – Amiel.

Before Sunrise, 1995

Leaf 296 – Art Inspired

 

Before Sunrise (1995) IMDb

When the film ‘Before Sunrise’ (1995) came out, I deliberately decided not to go and see it. And I’m glad I didn’t. I only saw it for the first time a few years ago, and it is now one of my favourite movies. I’ve seen it several times since. The reason I chose not to see it at the time was simple. It sounded far too close to the life I was living at that moment. A close friend and I used to haunt London’s Southbank together. Idly wandering along the Thames and across the city. In and out of pubs, cafes, art galleries and cinemas. Killing time by sharing our idle thoughts in idle chats. Randomly roving wherever we wanted to go. Following our feet, following our whims. We were both students skipping lectures just to be together. She was an artist and I was a poet. We were filled with all the dreams and aspirations of two frustrated kids going nowhere with hardly any money. Watching ‘Before Sunrise’ now takes me straight back to those long and endless lazy days, right in the middle of the 1990s. Before the internet, before mobile phones. I can hear the two of us mirrored in those wandering, aimless conversations; caught by the movie in that cherished moment of time. It could so easily have been written about us. I’m so glad I saved that film for now, for the nostalgia. Thinking of all the lives we could have led, I’m glad that for a short moment at least, that was exactly the one we were able to live together. Even if it wasn’t to last.

 

 

BEFORE SUNRISE, 1995

 

Going round and round in circles:

 

            idle days

            idle thoughts

            idle chats.

 

 

 

 

Alexandra Buckle - Southbank Puddles (2018)

After Midnight

Leaf 295 – Homeward Bound

 

For about a year or so, when I was around the age of nineteen, I had a job as a barman on the other side of town. When I finished my evening shift, after midnight, I often used to walk home. It was a long walk of several miles. I’m not sure now why I never caught the bus. I certainly took the bus there sometimes. It might have been because the buses had stopped running by that time of night, or possibly I preferred to save the bus fare, and more likely get some fresh air after working all evening in a smoky pub. Whatever the reason was, one night in particular sticks in my mind. Because on that night, when I was walking down the deserted High Street, I found myself following a fox. The fox had glanced over its shoulder at me momentarily, but was clearly unconcerned and simply carried on walking ahead of me. The hidden claws of her feet clicking on the metalled road while she walked. Anyone looking out of a window might have thought I was out walking my dog. It was a magical moment of nocturnal connection. At the end of the High Street the fox slipped into the trees by the bridge over the river, where I turned and followed Bridge Street onwards to home. It was only after I wrote the following poem and re-read it that I realised it could easily be read in a different – perhaps, more risqué and seedy – sort of way. But I assure the reader, my hometown wasn’t that kind of place, nor am I that kind of person.

 

 

After midnight –

through the empty town

following a fox.

 

 

 

 

Photograph by Tim Chamberlain (adapting an original artwork by an unknown artist)

Terminates Here

Leaf 294 – Homeward Bound

 

Metropolitan Line A-Stock Train (Amersham Museum)

Smells and sounds are often the unexpected, evocative echoes of the past. Growing up in the outer suburbs of northwest London, the Metropolitan Line was our lifeline into the city. This poem is an attempt to capture an aural recollection of what it was like arriving at Baker Street Station, either en route to work or heading out for a night on the town amid the bright lights of the West End. It was written as a nostalgic response to returning to Baker Street after many years away, the sounds and scents of the place instantly transcending time.

 

 

THIS TRAIN TERMINATES HERE

 

Silver carriages

kinking to the curve –

whispering, pneumatic kisses.

 

Echoing

along the platform,

a sharp screech –

rumbling out into

long rattles and clanks.

 

Easing into

a Baker Street siding,

doors sliding into a sigh.

 

 

 

 

Ron Embleton - Travelling to Work (Story of Newspapers, 1968)

Moonless Tide

Leaf 293 – Reflections

 

Anne Packard - Rowboat on Blue (1976)

I’ve always enjoyed tales of pirates and treasure islands, of tall ships and smugglers haunting out-of-the-way river inlets and rugged coves. This poem attempts to evoke something of the spirit of such tales, especially as I encountered them when I was a child holidaying in Cornwall each summer.

 

 

MOONLESS TIDE

 

A lone lantern –

listens for sculls slipped

in a shadowy cove.

 

 

 

 

from 'A Cornish Smuggler' by Captain Harry Carter (1900)

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

Full English

Leaf 292 – Looking Back

 

The place where I lived in Stoke Newington, above a shop on the High Street, was in the heart of the local Turkish community. I used to love eating in the Turkish restaurants there, where the food was always wholesome, healthy, and heartily generous – as well as surprisingly cheap. But at weekends, there was one place which I always liked to go – just for a change.

 

 

Eating

a Full English –

at the Bodrum Café.

 

 

 

 

Photograph credit: Time Out/Pinterest

Walthamstow Marshes

Leaf 291 – Looking Back

 

While living on London’s Stoke Newington High Street, some twenty-five years ago now, nearby Walthamstow Marshes was the place where I would go to get some rugged refreshment in the form of a long walk and a lungful or two of fresh air at the weekends – whatever the season, and whatever the weather.

 

 

WALTHAMSTOW MARSHES

 

Crunching gravel

along the Lea –

weathering the winds

rippling through reeds

on the low-lying marshes.

 

Metal wheels grind and

screech along the viaduct,

rattling rails; slow trains

slinking out of the city,

while birds take wing.

 

My foot thuds echo back

along the boardwalk;

the breeze slowly lightens,

heading homeward –

with a heart refreshed.

 

 

 

 

Photograph credits: N. Chadwick/Geograph

Clissold Park

Leaf 290 – Looking Back

 

Clissold Park - The Lake

There’s something especially enchanting about long summer evenings. Wherever I’ve lived, I’ve always enjoyed them. Finding a nice spot to do so has always been something I seem to have automatically done – largely because, ever since leaving home at the age of twenty-one, I’ve never been lucky enough to have my own garden. When I lived in Stoke Newington, Clissold Park was always a favourite place, particularly by the ponds. There are two ponds in the park: Beckmere and Runtzmere. Named after Joesph Beck and John Runtz, two public servants and philanthropists who managed to save the park for the local population back in the late nineteenth century. I have lots of fond memories of sitting by Beckmere after a day at work, watching tortoises basking in the sun, while a tern flapped over and fished the waters below. It was always a very peaceful spot. I often found it hard to tear myself away and head home for dinner.

 

 

CLISSOLD PARK

 

Summer evenings –

a book and a bench

by the pond.

 

 

 

 

Rio, Dalston

Leaf 289 – Looking Back

 

Marc Gooderham - Rio Cinema, Dalston

Following on from the leaf posted previously, this poem is the second in a series of verses to follow, which look back to when I was living in London’s Stoke Newington at the turn of the century. That’s a strange phrase! – In my mind, that really means the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century. Or, at least, that’s what it always used to mean, I suppose. Perhaps it would make more sense for me to have said ‘the turn of the millennium,’ or ‘Y2K.’ – It was a good time to be young. Life was challenging in a lot of regards, but I look back on it now with a large degree of fondness.

 

 

RIO, DALSTON

 

Strolling home

from a summer matinee,

under peach-hued clouds.

 

 

 

 

Marc Gooderham - Rio Cinema, Dalston