~
wet from the pond
swimmers huddle under towels
swans without feathers
~
even feathered friends
require maintenance
bags of squirming worms
~
yellow feathers strewn
tracing a course
playground for the cat
~
blue breasted dream
hummingbird in Notting Hill?
Impossible!
~
I endeavour to write haiku from my own experiences. So when I saw the topic this week I was a little worried. I tried to think of beautiful moments I'd had with birds, moments of profound and uplifiting connection with nature.
Unfortunately, I could only think of unpleasant ones - one legged pigeons, greedy raucous gulls, my cousin being pecked by a stork in a zoo, the Hitchcock film, my father's birds escaping and dead budgies. Even my supposed sighting of a hummingbird in London one hot summer about 10 years ago is tinged with sourness because nobody believed I saw it.
One person in particular that I told about my sighting was fervently adamant that I was mistaken. This person was in her 60s, always knew the names of everything and always carried a mini screwdriver set with her. All in all, she was a force to be reckoned with, and she was sort of my boss, so I was in no position to reckon. Also I couldn't think of any reason why she would be so vehement about it unless a) she was on the verge of dementia but this smacks of ageism so I couldn't really hold on to that one or, b) she was prone to unreasonable jealousy about unusual urban bird sightings that she wasn't party to.
Anyway, all the disbelief wore me down so I'm not even sure about what I saw anymore.
Perhaps I should spend more time in the countryside to build up my reckoning experience, at least when it comes to recognising birds.
So these are my offerings and why they came out the way they did, thanks for reading this far.
The drawing is an ink and watercolour collage. The fragment of cloth came from an old skirt.
The little feather came from the budgie that our old cat Caesar probably helped along to a premature end. Sorry little one.
9 comments:
Delightful series. I like how you make that metaphor work in the first one. Hard to do in haiku (IMHO).
Golly, how I enjoyed reading this post!
What a feast for the eyes and senses! Your drawing is wonderful and the photo of the feather is so sweet. I LOVE your haiku -- each one has terrific images: "swans without feathers"; "bags of squirming worms"; "yellow feathers strewn"; and "blue breasted dream". Lovely!
:)
I really enjoyed this post, especially your painting! Your hummingbird in London may have been a humming bird hawkmoth, they're often mistaken for humming birds and are certainly found in London, they're even found in Edinburgh these days! (Not that I don't believe your sighting!).
This whole post is wonderful. It really highlights how we can think we have nothing to say on a topic, but when we dig deep we find insights. And the haiku are lovely - the swimmers one very perseptive, and the cat one sad but true.
First of all, I love your watercolor, it's gorgeous. And the first haiku brought me back to my childhood. Wonderful!
Lovely watercolor. I really like the image in the first haiku of swans without feathers. Very nice.
these are great
you've stopped counting syllables [I'll stop talking now -- it's time to make supper!]
Lovely serie (hard to pick a favourite). I like your collage too.
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