Sketchbook  Alan Summers, UK

 

 

Rengay Green Tomatoes its house abandoned the garden has become home to butterflies     /Soji* too few zeroes in the checking account caterpillar tracks the new home takes the shape of a cocoon natural history— inside barbie's head the gleam of a pupa soft snow on the family Chrysler fried eggs— so many hand-me-downs left around the fir tree   Note* The first verse is by Iio Sogi (1421-1502) trans. Steven D. Carter.  The lifecyle of the butterfly has four stages or parts.

 

 

Haibun

Beyond the Crow

fading last note
the torresian crow’s sound
a darkening sky

black sky    stars more bright than I've seen before
they shift    move    vibrate    to suggest something more
it’s my last sighting of Jupiter    above Venus

a susurrus of moths
flickers round the fire
and into the night

it's brittle cutting cold    the moon's no longer full
a brutal simplicity of a night    beyond the colour of a crow

woodsmoke embers
spiral towards
the southern cross

quiet and dark    but then a rustle reminds me of the mythical Dreamtime Dingo
white and feral   and imagination lends fear to a night that will only leer at me

it’s an achingly long time before I see a lightening
a quickening that’s the tone of a hurt violet which is the morning

I rekindle the fire
sunrise burns mist
off pale blue trees

Note: earlier different versions were published in Paper Wasp, Queensland, 1997; Azami haiku journal, Osaka, Japan 1998; Blithe Spirit, June 2004; and Shamrock Haiku Journal, Irish Haiku Society, Spring 2006