
Distant Variations
Far away and long ago. Sometimes unwittingly a theme develops ...
distant hills
across the vale
skylark sing
distant hills
across the lane
children play
distant bells
a red kite rises
into sunlight
wheeling gull
behind the plough ...
distant thunder
The latter two haiku were first published in the Spring and Summer 2020, issues of the Wales Haiku Journal edited by the award-winning haiku poet, Paul Chambers, and published in partnership with the Wales Arts Review.
Artist Credit
The featured image is from an original watercolour of Cranborne Chase by Philip L Eden, member of the British Watercolour Society (1924)
Indeed Clive! When an idea comes into my head, I have to ‘run’ with it, otherwise the flow of creativity ends up at the buffer stop, at the end of the line. And how often that original thought turns into something quite different.
Yes indeed! Here’s one that started with a neighbour felling a Corsican pine in our garden that had grown too large and was shading much of his back yard. Among the broken branches was a goldcrest’s nest. However the haiku that sprung from this was nothing like the original thought but seemed right somehow …
fallen pine …
crossing the stream
a red squirrel
Tda!
Sometimes we don’t see the themes in our work until later, or until someone points them out!
Oh absolutely- sometimes when writing I find it’s like playing an old record with the needle stuck in the groove – the same old thing again and again (though sometimes rehashed).
Paintings with life . Well done
have you always loved and written haiku?
I’ve only come to writing haiku in the last couple of years when I found that my prose was becoming overly succinct if that’s the right word. I’ve always loved words and books – I could read grown-up books and spell most of their words before I was out of kindergarten! So haiku seemed a natural progression – I’m able to combine my love of nature with my love of words 😊