snow bliss

caressing mountains
borne up by diamond crystals
surfing gravity

(just in case you wondered what I was up to just now!)

Seed

Bursting its kernel
A tiny voraciousness
Thirsts towards sunlight

For one single impression

The photo is Sprout, originally uploaded by Bitter-Sweet-.

Winter morning

I jounce past the birse
Of hedges griseous with frost
Where cold throstles sike.

This haiku is based on the friday five at poefusion, where Michelle is challenging us to write a poem with the following rather unusual words:

jounce – to move with a jolting motion
birse – bristle or bristles
griseous – dappled with grey
throstle – a thrush
sike – to sigh (among other things)

Experience

 

From the dents of life
a strange alchemy creates
personality.

For Poefusion’s Monday Mural. The picture is by juggle5 on flickr.

Red river morning

Wary shepherds sleep
while hunters scan the mist with
red-flushed camera eyes

Another beautiful sunrise, taken in the same spot (on a different day) as my post fire and water. Again, no photoshopping or colour alteration – this is exactly what it looked like!

For Skywatch Friday

Hot summer roads

Deep-fried gravel burns
The weary soles stumbling through
A summer’s oven.

Yet another haiku, this time in response to the Tuesday Title at Poefusion, which in this case was the phrase “deep-fried gravel”. The photo is Hot Summer Gravel Road, originally uploaded to Flickr by Jared in Kansas.

Traveller’s tales

This post may take some time to load, but I think it will be worth it. These photos were all taken on one spectacular plane journey (from South to North America), which I and my notebook enjoyed greatly! I have to say that long journeys are great for getting lots of writing done!

Stern peaks chronicle
In golden calligraphy
The elements’ war

High in mountain air
I forgot the caress of rain
The softness of haze

A landscape doodled
With meandering paintbrush
By some toddler god.

 

High as the proud crests
Of towering thunderheads
I soar over sea.

Island paradise
Haloed in dreamy reefs of
Pearl, gold and turquoise

A beacon beckons
Bright in the softness of night
Calling me onwards.

 

Perhaps appropriately for a post about travel, I’m posting this on the Meme Express.

Escapist reading – two haiku

Through a gate of words
My heart escapes its fear. Rests
In other minds’ dreams.

Do I spend too long,
Safe but lonely, inside my
Paper-walled fortress?

Summer and winter

Winter feels coldest
When everyone else is
Enjoying summer.

They bask, relaxed on
life’s green lawns, full of summer.
Joy warming their bones.

Blanketed, I shrink.
Sipping comforting hot tea
Waiting for the sun.

This is partly a reflection on what it’s like to keep being prompted to write poems about summer in the southern hemisphere’s winter. It’s also partly a reflection on how other people’s happiness looks when we’re going through more difficult times. Each verse is a senryu/haiku, and while they work together I’ve written them so they can also stand alone.

(I wrote another set of haiku contrasting summer and winter quite some time ago – in rather a different mood!)

Strange sunset – haiku

Mountain flames, fire smokes -
Brush and alpenglow burn red
Under eggshell sky