heat haze haiku

skylarksong—
blue butterflies flutter
in heat hazed fields

 

originally published in Haiku Girl Summer.  

**

May is the perfect time to take a walk, so that's what I wrote about in my latest Crafty Green Poet Substack post, which you can read here.

birdsong haiku

song thrushes sing
after the downpour —
petrichor

**

originally published on Haiku Girl Summer.  

Haiku Girl Summer will re-open for submissions of haiku on 15 May. 

**

I've just added some vintage sew on patches to my Crafty Green Magpie Etsy shop, you can see them here. 

haiku

warming seas—
coral reefs weep
with algae

originally published in cattails.  

**

read updates on the state of Australia's Great Barrier Reef here. 

 

The Alchemy of Night

Those specks we call stars
are the fire embers
of spirits leaving bodies.

The bridges of the city shake
under quaking neon clouds.

Everything is about to collapse.

Even the stars. 

 

originally published on Shot Glass Journal. 

Bird-watching for Beginners

She could be anyone, this beautiful stranger.
She’s staring across the street.

At first, you think it’s you she’s staring at
(perhaps you’re getting lucky?)
but then you realise, no
she’s staring at something behind you.

You look round but all you can see
are birds.

Birds?

Why is a beautiful woman staring at birds?

You shake your head and carry on
to your office where you sign
a warrant to log
another forest.

 

originally published in the Birds Zine from Coin Operated Press. 

In the Office

The rain has stopped.
From my desk, I watch
October sunlight play
on the white walls
of the football stadium
across the car-park.

Upstairs, someone else’s boss
moans about the weather
‘It’s raining cats and dogs
and dark as winter’.
I am my own boss
free to watch the slow movement
of sunlight across white walls
as geese fly overhead
winter on their wings.


Originally published in the seemingly now defunct Work Literary Magazine.

Rainy Season haiku

no rain

in this 'rainy season' -

silent lightning 

 **

Inspired by my time in Malawi, where the rains failed in my second autumn.

First published in The Mamba, Issue 14, the journal of the Africa Haiku Network.

 

Viewing a Landscape through Cataracts

Nothing is clear, all is blurred green
with blotched lights strung out like beads
while every dew-drop glows
at the centre of its own rainbow.
We seem to be in the middle of fields
and there looks to be woodland over there.
I wish I could see the birds that are singing.

Surgery will soon fix my eyes:
these blurred colours will resolve
back into shapes and meaningful things
but nothing is clear for this land -
any time in the future, all this greenery
could be erased just by the whim
of a bureaucrat's pen.

(inspired by Green Terrain by Kelly Austin-Rolo, and originally published on Ekphrastic Review. 

**

Since writing this poem, I've had cataract surgery on my left eye (my right eye was done seven years ago) and my eyesight is much improved. 

Sadly, despite the change in government in the UK, the future for the UK's green spaces is no more secure than it was with the previous government.

Butterfly haiku

a sunbeam

through the woodland canopy -

dancing butterflies 

*

previously published in Golden Haiku 2024 and displayed in Washington DC

mallard tanka

a female mallard

tucks blue

back into her wing—

dimensions stretch and curl 

in the fabric of space-time 

 

 

first published in the inaugural issue of Password

Crafty Green Poet on Substack

I've started up on Substack! I'll still be blogging on this site, but on my Substack, I plan to share longer posts, most Wednesdays, all about nature and environmental issues through a creative lens. 

You can find out more and subscribe here. I'll be publishing my first post on Wednesday. 

To start with, all my content on Substack will be free, and most content will always be free, but I will eventually introduce paid subscriptions, particularly as I've already a generous blog reader pledge a paid subscription! Paying subscribers will get access to extra content. 

My first post was published today. You can read it here.  Let me know what you think! If you like what you see, please consider taking out a free subscription.

fewer swifts haiku

fewer swifts 

in the sky this summer -

my fading eyes 

previously published in Trash Panda

House Sparrow haiku

house sparrows
nest in the eaves -
childhood memories

originally published on HaikuNetra.

 

wildflower haiku

so much 

for the wildflower meadow -

new supermarket 

originally published on HaikuNetra.

 

Vivid Colours on Edinburgh's Corstorphine Hill

We had a lovely walk around Corstorphine Hill yesterday. 

I had cataract surgery on my left eye last week (I had the right eye done in 2017). One of the advantages of cataract surgery is that colours suddenly become much more vivid, so I was able to appreciate these Scarlet Elf Cap fungi even more than has been normal over the past few years:

Another advantage of cataract surgery is being able to see detail more clearly, so where in the past couple of weeks I had been struggling to find the tiny female flowers on the Hazel trees, yesterday I could see loads of them (though of course this may have something to do with the timing of their appearance as well as with my improved eyesight!). 

**

Cataracts are actually quite inspiring for a poet, so now seems like a good time to revisit a couple of haiku on the topic that I had published on the Kalanopia website a few years ago.

Tree Following

This year for Tree Following, I've chosen the beautiful cooking apple tree in Crafty Green Boyfriend's mother's garden. You can read the post where I introduced the tree here. 

The tree is around fifty years old and produces a lot of apples (last year was a bumper year and I gave apples to colleagues, neighbours, students in my writing classes as well as friends!). The apples are excellent in apple crumble or just stewed and eaten with custard or added to porridge. 

The tree has now lost most of its leaves.

A few apples are still hanging on 

The tree hasn't produced as many apples as last year, but there's still been a fairly decent harvest and several apples left over for the Fieldfares and Redwings to enjoy. Last year, a Fieldfare became quite aggressive, defending 'his' apples from all the other birds in the garden! 

**

Talking of apple trees, the Neighbouring Orchard is a wonderful project in the east of Edinburgh (the other side of town from my chosen apple tree!) connecting people through apple trees planted in private gardens and public green spaces. The project is now moving into new areas of town. You can read more about the project here. 

**

I'm happy to say that Green Ink have just published my poem Raspberry Picking in the Forage edition of their online journal.

Fetch! (a 100 word story)

 Laika fiddled with the controls of her spaceship, wondering what she was meant to do. Then she looked out at all the objects orbiting the earth alongside her. Misshapen, derelict spacepods, long-lost pieces from the International Space Station and occasional space gloves swirled past like an endless line of balls and sticks. A memory stirred. She barked excitedly, set the controls to CHASE and swooped from side to side, using the craft's grasping tool to grab each piece of space junk. She wagged her tail. Somewhere in her memory, a human voice said 'Fetch!' She was in heaven. 

**

Previously published in Drabble Harvest #7: Space Junk (published by Hiraeth Books), and winning the first prize in the Space Junk Drabble Contest. 

A Drabble is a story which is exactly 100 words in length.

black dog haiku

a black dog
in a derelict tunnel -
distant thunder

**

previously published on Under the Basho.

 

Mayfly Time

 heat haze

swallows laze

across the lake
to catch mayfly

for the mayfly
iridescent in the sun
this languid day

is eternity 

 

previously published in Plum Tree Tavern 

kestrel haiku

high winds -
a kestrel hovers
somehow

**

previously published on Under the Basho.  

**

I have two senryu in Issue 85 of Failed Haiku, you can read the whole issue here.