Mountain (NaHaiWriMo 2025: Day 2)

 

childhood

ringed by mountains —

flatlands terrify

***

‘from whence

cometh my strength?’ —

the mountains 

***

my dad’s painting 

Mount Roland blue and craggy —

our favourite

***

in Peru

mountains are deities —

I lift up mine eyes

***

‘cloud catcher’

our local mountain 

caught me too

***

four years

under The Pinnacle —

guardian 

All photos mine.

My response to the latest NaHaiWriMo prompt.  Later: NaHaiWriMo was back in February, but I'm sharing this (in June) with Poets and Storytellers United, for Friday Writings #180: Stubborn About the Small Things.

Mountains are not small, LOL, but haiku are! Anyway, I'm stubborn in my love for mountains and my dislike of flat country. A friend who was brought up on the plains always loved flat country dearly; others have told me they feel 'hemmed in' when surrounded by mountains. But I grew up that way, and experience it as an opening up to the vastness above, and a reassurance of safety. I'm ecstatic to be living surrounded by mountains again in my old age.

(I'm also stubborn in the belief that 5-7-5 syllables is the least important rule of haiku – and in fact, for English-language haiku, is not a rule at all.)

In Still Air

one high note

then a few more

hesitant

brief piping of a recorder

in the hands of the child

across the road

suddenly stopped 

a small music

yet full of hope

Written for Friday Writings #128 at Poets and Storytellers United, where we are invited to write about something small. I decided to write mine in the small form I've been playing with lately: textu (160 characters exactly, including title and spaces).

Cat Haiku

~ 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.)

 

 

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?]