~ and one American sentence ~
wakeful playful
morning cat pauses
for a good wash
*********
from her sweet face
long loud yowling —
she wants me NOW
*********
Spring night
my cat wants play
not sleep
*********
So as to settle purring to sleep she insists on my stroking hands.
*********
my cat curls asleep
wrapped in folds of red blanket
as if in a rose
Linked to Friday Writings #6 The shorter the sweeter? at Poets and Storytellers United. (We could share up to 12 micropoems.)
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
a tiny green tree frog
gives huge voice –
his joy my comfort
its deep steady throb
sodden ground
greening as new weeds
split the mulch
*********
rain-soaked Spring –
perhaps this Summer
no bushfires?
I swap
the queen size bed
for a single –
telling the Universe: no,
I really don’t want company
I choose bright colours
today, to match the flowers
this first day of Spring
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?]
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.
