November 30th

the glitter of frost

smothers the morning hurry

secret warmth returns

 

When it’s just above freezing, but the sun makes you feel warm? That!

November 6th

 

the first frost melted

in the rising cocksure sun

whilst I slumbered on

a cherub asleep

in the blackout sanctity

of my feather bed

October 22nd

 

before dawn the world

stands silent bar the fox steps

a puff of breath dies

I woke up early this morning, not by choice, couldn’t get back to sleep. 4.30am, I savoured that truly magical time before dawn where people are sleeping, but out in the fields; adventures, life and death, survival. To me it was a silent time, but outside I knew things stirred and died.

October 21st

 

droplets congregate

drag her delicate trap down

visible, useless

spider slick with mist

the crystalline deposits

on her silken threads

September 28th

 

newspaper tumbles

betwixt the trees breaking from

the cracked paving slabs

coming to rest on

black painted railings, a sail

fluttering helpless

------

the damp chill dissolved

by the sun rising, singing

then again the rain

London on an Autumn morning. Two poems, one a two Haiku composition and another standalone. Sometimes I think that I’ve written something similar on a previous day this year. The second especially seems to remind me of something I’ve previously written, but at least there’s another original offering for today.

August 9th

orchestra soundcheck

cockerel wren dove and blackbird

a dawn performance

Up early as feel over hot, listened to the world, it’s a bit late in the year for a proper dawn chorus, most birds have nested, their young have fledged, but I heard a distant cockerel, an agitated wren chirping, doves cooing and a blackbird’s warning call. If you listen carefully to the silence, it’s deafening.

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.

April 15th

The frost melts to dew

timid birds find their voices

in the burning dawn

 

We went for a dawn walk today, we saw the sun rise and heard the birds sing. A Willow Warbler warbled in a willow (really). We didn’t see any otters. The river flit is on the edge of their travelling range. Would be lovely to see one.

Pic I took of Flitton Church and the sun rising behind it.

April 1st

The blackthorn archway

promised enchantment, a door

distant bells ring out

 

What a beautiful walk this morning. One of the blackthorn trees on the edge of the moors, bathed in the warming sun of early spring, was flowering. It must sit in a sun trap, as the other blackthorns nearby were not as magnificently decked out as this beauty. The sky was a clear blue, the morning chill was ebbing away. There were birds everywhere. Woodpeckers (Green and Great Spotted), Buzzards, Chiff-Chaffs, Treecreepers to name some of the more unusual ones.

Managed to get some (I say this humbly!) wonderful photos. Here are four, two of the blackthorn tree in question, one of a feisty wren who took exception to my presence and sat above my head singing loudly at me (I assume telling me in musical terms to “piss off”). And finally a teeny baby frog Debbie found on the moors. It is very early for a juvenile frog, when most of the new brood seem to have only just hatched into tadpoles, seething in the shallow ponds and stagnant parts of the river, not sure how it emerged so quickly as I doubt something this small crawled up onto land last spring.

March 19th

Behind the blackouts

a faultless sky forgiving

alive and lucid

 

Blackout curtains are great, I think they help me to sleep better. The absence of light helps me to turn off part of my brain and leads to restful nights. I like the lottery of mornings, blearly eyed, staggering to the window to open it a peep. Check what the weather is like. How do I know it’s morning if I keep going on about flippin’ blackout curtains? Because I’ve got an alarm silly! Dur!

Anyway this morning was beautifully sunny, my pupils shrunk in pain at the sunlight assault pouring through onto my retinas. When they adjusted a bit I looked out to a perfect blue sky. The clouds were absent. Wonderful.

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.