Gosh, but it’s hot. A run of daily temperatures over 30°C has come on top of a run of temperatures in the late 20s, and there’s been no rain to speak of for weeks – and none forecast either! The countryside that was so green in December is now a crispy brown. In a terrible twist the coronavirus means our meat isn’t being shipped to China (no one to unload it, let alone buy it) so freezing works are refusing to take animals, right as the drought bites and at a time when farmers traditionally relieve the feed burden on their properties by lowering stock numbers. Hard times ahead.
Yes, it’s summer in New Zealand and we should expect some hot weather but our summers aren’t usually so unbearable … except that last year was as well. And there are still fools denying climate change is a thing. As someone said recently, they tend to be older men who have ended up at a website full of dubious ‘facts’ and shonky ‘research’ and are now convinced humans have nothing to do with world’s weather becoming more extreme and refuse to ‘do their bit’, all the while being utterly unreachable by anyone with a bit of sense. Bah!
Now that’s off my chest, let’s read some haiku.
Another Trip Around the Sun: 365 days of haiku for children young and old, edited by Jessica Malone Latham (Brooks Books US) features a poem for every day of the year (orientated for the northern seasons so I’m transposing them).
January/July 6
smell of the heat –
I snip a little dill
for the cucumbers
Ellen Compton (US)
February/August 3
summer walk
the length of
a fudgesicle
Jacqui Pearce (Canada)
February/August 19
summer garden
taking inventory
one bite at a time
Jeff Hoagland (US)
March /September 1
bursting out
from every hedge –
naked ladies
Sandra Simpson (NZ)
Naked ladies, by the way, are Amaryllis Belladonna, a bulb that flowers without leaves.
A copy of Windfall 8 landed in my letterbox today. This small annual publication is edited by Beverley George and features the work of Australian poets. Subscriptions for outside Australia are $A25 for two issues (ie, two years), payment in Australian currency to Peter Macrow, 6/16 Osborne St, Sandy Bay, TAS 7005, Australia.
Sadly, Australia has been having its own battles with a changing climate this summer.
invisible
in a charcoal landscape
this black snake
Helen Taylor
drought
the scratchings of a cockatoo
on the guttering
Kieran O’Connor
shooting star
a minute’s silence
for the earth
Hazel Hall
I’ll finish with a small selection from the Summer chapter of number eight wire, the fourth New Zealand haiku anthology (only a few copies left, be in quick).
bobbing up the riverbank
the dust of a rabbit
skipping stones
Marion Moxham
blowfly!
being your friend
isn’t easy
Dick Whyte
Pohutukawa tree stamp image courtesy NZ Post
end of summer
scarlet stamens in the folds
of my tent
Elaine Riddell
breath, a collection of haiku 