among cow parsley constellations      our eyes getting used to the dark


 

dead nettles      i was right      all along


 

photo

click to enlarge

 

photo

click to enlarge

i've been stoned

My Touchstone Award from The Haiku Foundation's Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems, 2012. My deepest thanks to THF, and to the long chain of postal employees who passed it hand to hand all the way from the United States to here in the UK. It's heavy!

 

after the rain      trees dripping with birdsong

forget-me-nots . . .     huh, but how many of my years      just a blue haze


 

bee

not waving away but waving to      the pilot of a small yellow helicopter 


 

carrying its message in the blood      thethrumofsomemachinery

from flower to flower      sips of our homemade plum gin      deep in the drone of bees


 

The orange plastic bag takes a deep breath of breeze and, with a short run-up,

leaps the fence.


 

a thin triangle of sunlight     stretched out on the sickbed ceiling


 

 
sawing apple branches     crow's voice     cuts on the pull back


 

 
ablaze with dandelions     the mound where once there stood a castle


 

 
hidden among brambles the sudden scent of chives


 

day moon, half moon     planting another line of seed potatoes      across the sky


 

 
bad blood     each cut into the soil lets out some darkness


 

they open the lock gates     my anger subsides

 
landlocked in the pampas grass an ocean storm


 

a gleam of citrus sunlight in the sweet tin