Sunday 18th November
I had been looking at my front garden for days looking a bit bedraggled and had been intending to get around to tidying it up a bit.
When I saw what a nice crisp day it was today, I got the rake out and raked up all the leaves on the grass and then swept the remaining leaves that were on the pathway.
As I was raking up the leaves, I heard the voice of a solitary blackbird keeping me company and so I wrote the following haiku:
raking up leaves
a solitary blackbird
serenades me
And to complete today’s reflection, a nice picture and a few lines from the master WB Yeats
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine and fifty swans.
from The Wild Swans at Coole
by William Butler Yeats
Magical Rachael, that was a great day!! What a beautiful haiku too!! I miss my garden at the moment but am looking for it everywhere I go here in the city. On my way into Trier on Saturday, there was a bank full of Cotoneaster and I wrote....
ReplyDeletemisty noon
scarlet berries
so bright
and walking along the park full of trees I don't have names for, I wrote....
a room
lined with books
falling leaves
These are for you with love. Maire X
Thanks Máire. I love your haiku and the last one, brilliant.
ReplyDeleteIt has great punch in its delivery, especially the context in which you explain not having names for the trees. There are so many varieties of plants and trees, not to mention birds. In mine I had to use a bit of artistic licence and call the bird a black bird. I thought it sounded better than just 'bird'. I've been told before at a poetry workshop, that it's always better to name the bird, so hence I decided it would be a blackbird, but first I googled to make sure that the blackbird could actually sing, as opposed to squalk like a crow (lol) and I googled the question, birds common in Irish gardens, winter time, and I reckoned I couldn't go too far wrong.
Thanks a mill for leaving comment on blog. I turned off the word verification thing as people were finding it difficult to leave comments. In fact when I think of it, I heard the bird but could not see him because he was hidden in a hedge somewhere, so maybe I could incorporate that into the haiku. As you probably know, the writing is very often in the re-writing.
Lit a candle for you today when I was out on my walk. Popped into church as I was passing by, not that you have to go to church to light a candle, but just thought I do it there as I was passing by. Rachael xx