My deaf cat ...

My deaf cat

doesn’t hear the storm.

If she feels the energy

she gives no sign.

She calls me insistently

as she does every night

to come stroke and scratch

behind her ears and under her chin,

then settles on her white rug

and relaxes into sleep.

In heavy rain ...

in heavy rain
a tiny green tree frog
gives huge voice –
his joy my comfort
its deep steady throb

Wet Spring Haiku

sodden ground

greening as new weeds

split the mulch

*********

rain-soaked Spring –

perhaps this Summer

no bushfires? 

Sending a Signal

I swap 

the queen size bed

for a single –

telling the Universe: no,

I really don’t want company

I choose bright colours...

I choose bright colours

today, to match the flowers

this first day of Spring

An American Sentence for Issa

Haiku nights: going to bed with Issa again; he’s wintering too.

Notes:

I'm reading this book (pictured) in bed every night lately; at present looking at his winter haiku – while it's winter for me too just now, here in the Southern Hemisphere.

Written for Weekly Scribblings #78 at Poets and Storytellers United, where Magaly invites us to choose one of several micro-forms.

 

Ironic, perhaps, that I didn't choose a haiku to reference Issa, one of the great haiku masters. But then, this piece is more senryu than haiku – and an American sentence can be either ... or neither.

 

[Is a poem actually working when the explanations are longer than it?]

 

COVID Haiku / Senryu (2)

I kiss my cat

no social distance

we rub faces

Looking Out from Kerry’s Veranda

yellow blooms

dot the hillside

above the town

a stand of palms

tall and spindly –

heads move together

the mountain

is truncated, smoothed 

by swathing cloud

white truck 

blocks the lane –

car wriggles past

red sign

juts from a spread

of pale grey roofs

March afternoon –

clouds fill the sky

curls of grey

the church roof

rises in a point

aimed at the sky

a small mend

in the wire mesh 

focuses my gaze  

Some friends asked me, 'Teach us to write haiku.' As a start, I told them to write three-line observations of what they saw around us – plain descriptions, in present tense. 'These are not haiku,' I explained, 'but will put you into the mind-set of haiku.' I wrote with them, and later realised that what I had produced was (of course!) a series of small stones.

COVID Haiku / Senryu

I Zoom in

close enough to touch

what's not flesh