December 21st

 

midwinter dawning

ice age hill shrouded in mist

backlit with a jewel

I drove past Pegsdon Hills today. The mist was covering the top of them. The sun was muted behind it, diffusing the light such that it looked like the whole hill was alive with a wild glow. It was stunning. Clearly I couldn’t take a picture as I was driving and I had so much work to do, I couldn’t stop, but for that brief moment my mind was free of meaningless first world problems. Nature and natural forces are inspirational.

I always feel happy on midwinters day, it’s the time of year when the days slowly recover. I’m acutely aware of the encroaching darkness as the days shrink and the miserable rain and cloud come in. So today is the shortest day, tomorrow the day will be longer, imperceptibly so, but the thought of it makes me happy. This has been a year of reflection and sadness, I hope by March with the coming of colour and Spring, something will thaw in me too.

October 20th

 

tufted feathers stand

up on his downy young head

exuberant Jay

A Jay jumped out onto the grass verge as I was driving. He looked so long and awkward. A young one for sure, his legs lanky and thin, a little look of surprise and wonder in his face as he or she scooted around, possibly for a place to bury food for the winter. He had a punk crest on his head, where the wind had blown it up momentarily. It made me smile.

pic from RSPB website

October 8th

each storm drop painful
boulders on mottled toad skin
brown-grey, born from clay

I saw a toad crossing the road as I was driving in a heavy and sustained rain shower, it was only a brief moment, reflected in my headlamps. It passed under my wheels (yes, it was safe, from me anyway). I could tell it was a toad as it was walking in that awkward measured way of theirs. It was probably trying to find somewhere to hibernate. In the Spring they’ll make the long walk back to their spawning ground, like they do every year, to breed. Another perilous journey to come after the long sleep.
For my longer narrative poem, check my other blog Storm Toad. It’s a long skinny poem, looks nothing like a toad at all, but I think it has a measured meter about it, the slow plod, plod, plod of the toad's determined walk.

October 6th

the sheen of night rain

blue sky cut by vapour trails

the road a river

September 12th

At dusk weary crows

drag their long wings through the air

shadows departing

I drove past two crows, who took off and loped away, blots of night on the remnants of the day.

July 24th

broken memories

snippets of cloudless skies form

as the cool air rolls

 

I don’t remember doing much, my senses must’ve been dulled today. But it was nice and I drove with the air con blasting and my music playing.

May 21st

Black eyes examine

the gasping rabbit body

sweet hot red broken

I had to wake up at 4.30 to get out of the house at 5.30am. On my drive to the train station I saw a crow who’d just swooped down to test the corpse of rabbit roadkill. It must’ve been fresh, the crow looked pensive as if any minute many more birds would descend and take it away. That’s all I saw, I drove on.

The train station was cold, I had a jacket on. I was happy to get into the warmth. As the train hurtled northwards, I noticed the dull grey of morning give way to blazing sunshine. Summer had arrived.

Timid dawn lumbers

the mists shimmer burn away

summer’s love blazes

Two Haiku’s today, but my first of the year which cites summer.

May 1st

Vision in the spray

eggshell clouds crack, vapour fades

Apollo’s favour

It had been bucketing it down all day. As I was driving home after playing football (I scored a pearler, curled right into the top corner) the clouds parted to reveal a radiant sun. Shame it was so late in the day, but at least the Sun god blessed us.

April 24th

 

Sky ribbons glide by

bound by sinew and feathers

an effortless kite

Got a really good view of a red kite as I was driving today. It was flying very low, gliding. They look so delicate, as if they weigh next to nothing. “Kite” is so apt, you can imagine someone reeling them out on a long line and taking pleasure from their slow manipulation of the air currents.

Red Kites used to be endangered in the UK, but interestingly they were one of the most common birds in urban london, picking up the detritus, feral, important in the clearing of disease carrying carrion. It was sad they were driven back to small pockets in Wales.

It’s great they’ve made a comeback and are slowly spreading east. So distinctive and beautiful in the sky, with their broad wings and forked tails.

(image from RSPB)

April 7th

Reared up on hind legs

taut and lissom hare surveys

green and pleasant land

 

Was it a hare we saw in the grass on Pegsdon Hills as we drove past? Probably not, it was dusk, we didn’t get much of a chance to study it, but I’d love to see one, they’ve always eluded me. Once I did think I saw one, it was certainly rabbit/hare like in shape and it seemed to be striding rather than hopping. It looked big. But part of me doubts the way I perceive things. Until I’m 100% sure, I can’t say I’ve seen one. It might be my brain planting a wish into the way my eyes interpret the real world. Can’t say for sure.

Hopefully I’ll catch them boxing at some stage this spring, that will be a sight to behold. I make no apology for quoting the great talent that was William Blake in this Haiku :)

(pic from bbc website)

April 3rd

Patchwork foal staggers

to the warmth of his mother

stitched from rags and socks

 

I was driving to the office in Stevenage, I remembered a couple of years ago I used to look forward to a certain stretch of road, this was at the time when my visits to that office were far more regular. Every morning I’d look out for the foal in the field by the side of the road, just past Hitchin. It was so gangly and fluffy. Like a toy. It used to stay close to its mother looking especially timid. As the weeks and months progressed, it got bigger, grew more confident, I’d see it playing sometimes, running along, throwing his head from side to side. Little snapshots of the foals life, watching it grow up, in those short seconds each day I was driving by. The memory made me smile.

There’s more ponies in that field now, and another foal, but I can’t be sure if it’s the same family group. It’s like my memory is that of a feeling or an emotion rather than any image or pictures in my mind. I can’t even exactly be sure what the foal looked like now.

March 27th

As the sun lowers

mercurial pipistrelle

skims stone cottages

 

Saw a bat as I was driving home the other night. They are so tiny and manoeuvrable, always looking frantic and busy, yet still elegant in night flight. Forever catching insects. Pretty little things.

March 9th

 

The red kite circles,

Surveying St. Faith’s churchyard,

Mouse sanctuary.

 

Driving through the old pretty village of Hexton, the unmistakable shape (even for me!) of a Red Kite circled above me.

March 7th

I am only real,

When the headlights burn my back,

Long shadow walking.

 

Was walking back from the station late last night, bar a timid moon peeking through the thin cloud, the route to Greenfield from the station passes down a particularly dark lane. Walking this route late at night, I feel invisible, I disappear with my music in the darkness. Or if I have no music, I listen for tawny owls, the distant barking of dogs, or freight trains, unbuffered, rattling onwards.

I only exist when an approaching car blinds me or when a car drives past me from behind. As cars approach, I observe my shadow, racing and striding ahead of me, a hundred metres long. Then as the vehicles pass, I disappear, become invisible again.

February 11th

Ice miracle, dawn,

Splintered light, diamonds scattered,

Mist cowled serpent coiled.

 

I drove to Hertford this morning, was babysitting for my two young nephews. The sights along the way were breathtaking. Because it had been so cold and dry overnight (the air temperature was –12C when I was driving around 9am) it meant a rare phenomenon occurred. A hoarfrost. Where the moisture in the air freezes on trees and plantlife, leaving it looking like something out of Narnia. Completely white and glittering like jewels. It truly felt like a magical kingdom I had no right to witness. I’d woken up to a new world.

Pegsdon Hills looked magnificent and beautiful. I imagined an old ice serpent, an ancient dragon, stirred from a long slumber, who in its waking had frozen the land hard but left it staggeringly beautiful in its harshness.

I didn’t have my camera, I would have stopped and snapped at the sky, at the rolling mist, at the crazy light refracting through the ice everywhere so you couldn’t tell where the sun was in the sky. It was magical, some days make you truly appreciate being alive.

February 6th

 

Cautious movements, light,

Dim then bright, swirling, obscured,

Breaking through the mist.

 

I don’t like driving when the weather is awful. The possibility of ice on the roads combined with a thick mist in the dark. Stresses me out.

January 29th

 

Sombre steps, old priests,

Frayed feathers, contemplating,

Stooped, thought gathering.

 

Another anthropomorphic Haiku today I’m afraid. Saw some Rooks on my drive to Hertford. They weren’t in a group, they were spaced out (five or six of them) a good ten yards away from each other along a stretch of grass verge running parallel to the road. They always look deep in thought to me. As if they have arms folded behind themselves, stooped forward, taking stiff strutting steps and mulling over great worrisome issues taking place in the world.

Of course they were probably just looking for worms.

(pic from the RSPB website)

January 22nd

 

Crows dance, Buckshot specks,

Invisible threads weaving,

Murder tapestry.

 

As I was driving down to London I saw a great number of crows, perhaps fifty of them, high up in the Bedfordshire sky. They were swooping in and out, seemingly having the greatest fun without crashing into each other. It did look like they were weaving this great invisible tapestry in the sky. I’d never seen so many crows in a great black cloud before, a proper murder of them.

And seeing as Debbie is using her artwork to supplement her Haikus, I’m going to do the same, so I’m using her artwork too :)

Crows, 2010, by Debbie Brown, woodcut on monoprint. 10/25. Reproduced by kind permission :)