My Calendar(Haiku) - November
It rained and it rained and it rained ... cold wet November rain; the garden and fields around, boggy at the best of times, are waterlogged - pooling with water. And still it rained ...
low and silent
jack snipe flush from
flooded fields
I guess there’s not many places you can see these birds from your back garden. They like feeding in the marshy headlands next to our fence.
In the next field a mixed party of Starling, Redwing and Fieldfare are roving about, rising en-masse seemingly without provocation, before settling in another part of the field.
Notes
The whole area around home is dominated by the Iron Age hill-fort - Dinas Dinorwic. The hill-fort sits on one of the summits of a long ridge running NE-SW. On the NW the ground falls away steeply to rough grazing and marshy fields (and our house) through which flows a small tributary of the River Seiont; and on the SE the ground falls away less steeply to the marshy valley in which the River Cegin rises.
You must live in a beautiful area. Your words paint a picture.
Thank you! Our house and garden is south facing – beautiful in summer – but the wet cold winters are a misery – the driveway often underwater and the lawns more like paddy fields!
A lovely haiku and prose. Very apt for freezing November.
Thank you! I’m finding my writing is leaning more and more to this style – a short piece of prose followed by a related haiku. I’d hesitate to call it haibun but perhaps it’s getting there.
I started writing haibun and moved to haiku later. Hope to see more of these works from you.
I love you verse! And where you live! If I was able to I would move to Anglesey, not that far from you! An island! Okay, it’s got a bridge to the mainland but I keep looking back to time there and it feels like it’s calling me! Gosh! What am I saying at my age!
I hope Edo asks if he can plant your verse in his garden.
I know what you mean – I’ve lived in North Wales for nigh on 30 years – longer than anywhere else yet I still yearn for the West Country where I was born (Somerset).
You have a wonderful variety of birds. Strange we have had more sunshine so far than rain. Won’t last!
We are lucky – I think I’ve seen more birds here – mostly from the kitchen window – than anywhere else I’ve lived. It’s like having your own Nature Reserve!
A lovely use of alliteration in the haiku Clive and I can almost see the wet landscape from your words.
I’d struggled with this haiku for over a year but when I flushed a pair of theses birds again on a very wet morning it just clicked! Thanks Andrea.
Transcendent as always. Meaning that is takes me to another place. Thanks.
Transcendent – I like that!
Sounds like you’re in a flood plain, almost. Great for birdwatching, though! That’s an excellent haiku. Please consider allowing me to display it in hokku form. It would be a fantastic addition to the Garden. Let me know, Clive. Thanks!
[…] This wet winter hokku was composed by Clive Bennett and can be found at this site. […]