decay & after

a morning walk so full of glorious moments my mind is running over

brambles rear up nose around in the air - would-be suitors**

suitor

n.
1. A man who is courting a woman.
2. A person who makes a petition or request.
3. Law A person who sues in court; a plaintiff; a petitioner.
**4. A person or entity trying to acquire a controlling interest in a company, as by purchasing sufficient shares of its stock.

I wanted to indicate the invasive territorial nature of brambles, when they colonize an unkempt bit of garden or land.

jet overhead its sound furls downwards from a contrail of silk

scattering seeds tubby little goldcrest splatters the yew

sound of a Strad - drops of water rolling over velvet each clear note...

My depths are a bit shallow, but my soul is running over. a.k.a. Never mind the quality: feel the width. An unstoppable gush of words and images is suddenly set free. I feel like a poet again after four months' being on the leash. States Susumu Takiguchi: "Initial exploration of HAIKU by non-Japanese was like gunmo taizo wo naderu (a lot of blind men feeling a great elephant) whereby one says that the elephant is a tree trunk and another says that it is a giant fan, and so on. The loud voices saying that HAIKU was Zen, or HAIKU was not poetry, or HAIKU was Here and Now, or HAIKU was the product of the HAIKU moment, or HAIKU was nature poetry, or HAIKU was a verse in present tense, or HAIKU was devoid of ego, or HAIKU was an extremely serious and sacred business, or HAIKU reached some mysterious and profound truths captured in a few words, or HAIKU was not anthropomorphism, and all other hundreds of things rang out across the world and muffled any other voices saying things to the contrary." (World Haiku Review, 2008) Liberating, isn't it? We've been cocooned in what hundreds of people have said over the centuries, about the haiku form and its restrictions. Time to make up our own mind. Set it free and let the thoughts and feelings roll, like notes from a Strad over soft velvet. Let's celebrate the miracle that is the English language. Let's make our own three lined verses, honouring that language, which surely is the richest in the world. Let's walk side-by-side with the Japanese haiku, in mutual admiration, without slavishly copying what [we think] they are/were doing and do our own thing with our own spirit.

Written for CarpeDiem