Changeable spring weather has been to the fore this year – just today I have personally experienced bright sunshine, strong winds, lashing rain, hail, heat and cold. Ah, we think, as the sun breaks through, that’s the rain gone then …
I was standing outside a garden centre café, fortunately under a verandah roof, chatting to a friend I’d bumped into at lunchtime when it started to hail! To the end of August we’d already had more rain than the yearly average (1344mm) so it’s on track to be one of the wettest years since records began in 1898.
Instead of moaning, thought I’d seek out and share some themed haiku from my bookshelf.
cloudburst
the sound of raindrops
changing size
– Susan Constable
(Naad Anunaad, an anthology of contemporary world haiku, 2017)
holding a knife
I feast my eyes
on a rain shower
– Momoko Tsuji (b 1945)
(Far Beyond the Field, haiku by Japanese women, 2003)
left out
in the hailstorm
a pogo stick
– Alan Pizzarelli
(Fire in the Treetops, celebrating 25 years of Haiku North America, 2015)
uncertain sky
the dark centre
of the ram’s eye
– Pamela Brown
(another country, haiku poetry from Wales, 2011)
cold blue sky
coughing up
a couple of clouds
– John Stevenson
(quiet enough, 2004)
shaking
the packet of seeds
asking, are you still alive?
– Kiyoko Tokutomi (1928-2003)
(Haiku Mind, 108 poems to cultivate awareness & open your heart, 2008)
spring rain –
speaking of the dead
in a softer voice
– Chad Lee Robinson
(The Deep End of the Sky, 2015)
breath, a collection of haiku 