Friday 9 July 2010

Return to the woods - Haibun

After two weeks of steel and pipework, the beauty of the sea can wear a little thin. How good it is to be back in the real world: to wake at leisure and drink tea from a real mug with real milk. Looking out of the open window, green predominates


Woodpigeons cry
as a light rain falls
beneath the oak tree - sheep

While I’ve been away the path through the woods has become overgrown. Ferns grow shoulder high between the well-spaced trees. Rhododendrons abound. The woods are awash with sound: birds of many varieties, mostly unidentified, singing beautiful songs of violence and lust, insects busy themselves with the task of survival and all this underpinned by the gentle base note of a distant motorway. For a moment, two crows kick up and put an end to this backdrop of sound.

Hear the river now
and rain on the leaves above
and my footsteps.

The Annan is fast and wide where it passes the grassy islands and today, like any other, a heron glides silently near the far bank..

On the windowsill
steam from my tea wafts gently
on the breeze.

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