Haiku #748

748.

Inquisitive finch,
Patiently waits for others
To drink, though thirsty.

Haiku #743

743.

Nettles sting, tooth tips,
And yet the dock leaf grows there
Beside her illness.

Haiku #729 – #730

729.

Wet pigeon feathers,
A day of pelagic rain
Cannot inhibit

730.

Pre-determined birds,
Their otherworldly focus
On seeds and pellets.

Across The Glens

Across the glens
And through the trees

In Monarch antlers
Pollen breeze

We’d meet with love
And remedies.

A stagnant pond,
A ferrous stream,

By dreaming frogs who
Spoke in croaks of

Folklore and their journeys,
They woke a whisper of moths

Under mossy lichen-logs
Where we sat, held hands

And fell asleep in folds
Of wisdom and each other’s

Loss as if in blankets or ferns.
No one else could understand,

There’s no one quite like
You and me, for compassion’s

Company, not a single queen
Or king or woman or man,

Across the glens
And burning land.

First Finches

First finches having landed,
Found a suitable place to nest
In rooftiles’ gapped teeth.

Lichen gums, worn enamel,
A tap that can’t be turned off,
I live in a land of crow’s feet

And magpies as relentless as
Camels traversing Saharan
Landscapes. I remember beads,

Kaftans, strange dreams of
Otherworldly animals
Drinking from a sandy stream.

These finches did not know
The motives of crows; now
All I hear is a constant alarm

Like a monotone screech,
A warning, a rallying call to live,
Though their breasts may be

As small as young dwarf
Coconuts before they fall
On undiscovered islands.

Haiku #390 – #393

390.

Drizzle days, this cage
Is rusty, of aged metal.
Make me next petalled.

391.

Duck dreams in stomachs;
We could have built such systems
For love, and kindness.

392.

But we built instead
Blind slaughterhouses.
I’ll sit beneath blooms

393.

Of cherry blossom;
You are never forgotten,
Merely different.

Robin In The Rhubarb

Robin in the rhubarb,
Red breasted tops a canopy
Of sturdy green leaf;

There is a cat and a mouse,
And droppings on the monbretia;
Nature dances with itself.

With stalks the Robin chimes,
Its windpipe thrives on songs
Which rumble heaven-wide.

Haiku #378

378.

Two crows, now one crow.
No writing can expose time,
Only rhyme with it.

Ice Cream Van Blues

Modified vehicle, Siren’s tune,
A waveless estate long-lurking through;
Like whitetip sharks in a shipwreck’s stew,
You feel the bite before it’s due.

His sign declared with wide misspellings
That a Key Worker here is ice-cream selling;
Maranhão has unabated rainforest felling,
But when was truth for political telling?

In a dream this vendor was steaming sharks,
Teeth and fins, these delicate parts;
The children ate and sang in the park,
His menu made from pictographs.

I told you before of men who defraud
In times of crisis at home and abroad,
This world is not what they purport;
Which governments would Gods of Goodness support?

Downstream I heard he was arrested,
Moustachioed vendor van-grease vested;
The parents with placards well protested,
But the shark-forests died, left unprotected.

Haiku #366

366.

Cabbage-White flits by,
Faint poetry’s creator.
The sleep is survived.