hatsu hana, sakura and osozakura

For the dVerse Haibun Monday prompt: Cherry Blossoms. 

Every day I drive past a field on the edge of the village. A view of it opens suddenly between rows of tall trees, and I have to look quickly to catch a glimpse of it as I turn onto the bridge into the village. Today this field is darkened by the autumn rains to mud-brown, and even the sheep, knee-deep in mud, are mucky grey-brown.
But in my mind, it is emerald green with fresh spring growth, dotted with white sheep. It is sweet summer deep-gold with ripe grain and pale-gold with dry straw. It is drought-dry hard summer ochre, with willy-willies swirling columns of dust among the thirsty sheep. It is autumn grey. It is glittering white with winter frost. In a single glimpse it is all of these, all at once, each a vivid transparency overlaid on today’s precious glimpse.
I blink, and the field is behind me and I am slowing to enter the village, where the houses and a line of decorative street-trees begins, the last yellowed leaves falling from their bare branches…

I see blossoms foam,
leaf buds forming, un-furling,
on bare black branches.

T1’s Llama ha’sonnet

My twins are doing poetry in English at the moment, and they have to put together an anthology of their own poems, as well as analysing some poems.  This is a ha’sonnet Twin 1 (T1) wrote about our neighbour’s llamas, Devil (black) and Ghost (white), shown here lurking by moonlight:

Two llamas lurk
one dark, one light,
but both berserk,
gave mum a fright.
With stick-man legs
and big tall heads,
they make me laugh.

 

seven colours, a thousand layers

As a scientist, and an educator, there are certain things that really irritate me. “Science ruins the magic” comments are pretty close to the top of the list.   These sorts of comments undermine the efforts of science and maths teachers to produce a scientifically literate next generation who is capable of making informed decisions about climate, health… etc. (And do the people who make these comments complain that vaccines ruin the magic of viruses??)

One of the old standard pull-it-out-of-your-box-of-clichés complaints is that knowing how rainbows work takes away their magic.

Goulburn poultry auction

Rain pelting the tin roof gives a soft-solid background
to hens muttering annoyance and cocks crowing their outrage.
All those birds, five hundred or more,
waiting to be judged, their worth determined,
to be found wanting or wanted.

calling the sun to the sky (pantoum)

I wanted to write a pantoum yesterday for the dVerse prompt “coming full circle“, but between work and kids I just didn’t have the head space for something that long or structured. But with a whole have-to-free day I’ve indulged myself this morning with a second coffee and some writing time. Here is this morning’s attempt, inspired by Laverton’s 0600 reveille: 

The old cock crows.
Stretching his neck up
to start the new day,
he calls the sun to the sky.

The flags are at half-mast today

For the D’Verse MTB prompt “coming full circle“. 

The flags are at half-mast today.
Small white clouds dapple the blue sky,
and the sun shines quietly down onto
the green, green grass of the parade ground, where
the flags are at half-mast today.

let the clouds roll in

Let the clouds roll in, shrinking the world down around us
to just this valley, tucked among the hills,
to just this clearing in the forest,
to just this house,

lie back and don’t think of English

This latest “vision statement”
is filling me with anguish –
it’s a crime against coherence,
an assault upon the language:

flat on my assonance (no volta)

For the dVerse prompt “poetry form: Seguidilla“:

My attempts at assonance
fail right at the start,
all I get is dissonance
no matter the path.

365 f.p.y

For the dVerse Monday Quadrille prompt: “swift”.
A quadrille is a poem of exactly 44 words, and it must include the prompt word or a variation – otherwise, no constraints.

The days flicker past.

No longer discrete,
they blur together
into an illusion of continuity.