gogyohka for a waterfall

For Frank Tassone’s weekly haikai challenge.

water falls

swallow soars

above creeping flowers

yellow of trefoil

and waterfall blue of speedwell

 

cascade of colour

creaming the gold of summer

dew-spangled at morning

mist silver

by the light of the new moon

gogyohka for a clear evening

I’ll catch up on the comments and posts tomorrow, I hope.

 

a moon

nail paring

silver horns of the white cow

before the first star wakes

on the still ocean sky

gogyohka for discomfort

 

heat drips

on the back of the skull

like venom

and no Sigyn

to catch it in a cup

 

gogyohka for a summer meadow

For Frank Tassone’s haikai challenge. Yesterday was the first day this summer the thermometre topped 100°F (38°C°) but the flowers are still blooming.

 

after hay-making

chicory and cats’ ears scatter colour

across the ocean green

fragments of sky

drops of sunlight

 

 

Gogyohka for summer heat

 

too hot to sing for some

so warblers fill the silence

dutifully

with a silver trickle

cool as stream water

 

cloudless

the sky

vibrating with the cries of fractious crows

not too hot to chase

the drifting buzzard

 

still

a pause

and golden as melting butter

life trills in the shade

sweet and low

From dusk to morning

 

Deer are barking

across the setting sun

a world apart

 

through the long grass

snake glides

climbs the fig tree biblically

taking the slender boughway

over the hedge top

 

in the path

yellow feathers strewn

midnight feast

 

oriole flutes an elegy

for lost kindred

in the gold of morning

 

small corpses

cat-kill

laid by the path

an offering to the night fox

are gone by morning

 

Conundrums

 

in the dry heat

among smooth shiny things

the sun picks out beacons

sometimes diamonds

sometimes a hay stalk

 

sometimes a hay stalk

shiny smooth

drying in the heat

flashes like a diamond beacon

because the sun

 

because the sun

a broken stalk of fescue

shiny smooth

flashes diamond bright

sometimes

 

sometimes

in the dry heat

diamonds shine

smooth as hay stalks

caught by the sun

 

caught by the sun

sometimes

we see hay stalks

where there are only diamonds

flashing

gogyohka for night light

night falls

again and again

but the wind rises

and the light of the stars

is never quenched

gogyohka for a bit of sunshine

 

when the rain lashes in grey-green green-grey

and the stove is lit again in June

and the long meadow grass is a heavy sea

some small things bring light

with their own private sunshine

 

 

Gogyohka for a poorly cat

Trixie is twelve years old this month. We tend to forget she’s getting on a bit, she’s such a good little trooper. We took her to the vet this morning for the second time in her twelve years, because she won’t eat. It might be only a surfeit of voles or that dead bird she found and ate. She has some cat medicine to settle her digestive tract, and we have instructions to watch her carefully over the next couple of days. Crossing fingers.

 

there are more important things going on

more distress and more poignant stories

but when the Mistress of Pasta is unwell

sadness seeps into the silence

the light in the sky seems a little dimmer