Companionship

Parting used to be a wrenching,
Meeting, a clean dive into cool, green water
That made the breath catch.
Now she smiles goodbye, eyes averted, thinking
That maybe he knows she was just
Pretending last night, to work, so busy
Maybe he heard her sigh of relief when
He switched the light off
Maybe he knows she went to the balcony and touched
The leaves of her sleeping plants
And spoke to the stars and let her heart leap
To the crescent moon.
Maybe he knows her breath caught in her throat.
Maybe he did the same.

The Wind (Day 7)

I like windy weather. It makes
Me dream and
Pause.
Windy days take me away.
I’m in a country where people wear coats and scarves and
Stamp their feet and clutch hats.
I’m on a cliff and there is heather (heather!)
And peat smoke rising in thin grey tongues.
There are ships and sails and wooden vats.
The wind ruffles the days back and forth
Like a child saying “This one! No no – that one!”
And I jump here and there, happy
To be bossed around.
The wind makes clouds scud and doors thud and it
Howls and puffs and gusts and sighs
Behaving exactly the way the writers say it should.
I like windy weather:
It takes my feet off the ground.

Haiku Eight

Haiku Eight is up.

Also, I’ve started drafting Haiku Twenty-Eight, a finale. Since I am putting my haikus in git, I can do this work on a ‘branch’, which is like a separate copy of the collection that I make changes in – then when I am ready, I can ‘merge’ those changes into the main copy. So I’ve written something for Twenty-Eight, but it won’t appear online until I decide to merge it.

Git is nice like this, as it lets me do speculative changes, and keep or discard them later.

You can watch this process at the github network page, which shows each version of the collection as a blob, with a line showing what version sprang from what – gh-pages is the name of the ‘main’ copy, and lastday is my experimental branch where I work on Twenty-Eight. You can click on the blobs to see what differences there are between each version and the one before it.

Haikus so far

I’ve managed to keep up with a haiku a day so far!

They’re all linked from the index page, but here’s a quick index:

• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Five
• Six
• Seven

As you can tell, I’ve not actually given them titles – after all, they’re haiku; a title would be half as long as the thing itself…

My Mother-in-Law

She welcomed me into her family

With arms that were open wide

When adversity visited my life

She stood staunchly by my side

I lived in her home at the beginning

and never a cross word was said

We sat and we sewed together

Our love of crafts taken as read

Many years later I’m very grateful

For the training and love that she showed

I’m a mother-in-law now and promised to

take the path that she has honed

But daughters and sons-in-law remember

That love and care goes both ways

If you can show them how much you love them

It will last you the rest of your days

Children

Your children can make you happy

Your children can make you sad

Your children can make you very proud

but sometimes they just make you mad

Without them my life would be empty

the future would be very bleak

The love and respect of my children

is the solace in life that I seek

Their partners and children show loving

they travel for miles to the hospital to say

I hope that you’ll soon be much better

and with us you can come and stay

Perhaps these sentiments sound very soppy

Though often enough is not said

You must tell them often that you ‘love them’

Never leave these words ‘taken as read’

Love

The flame of the candle gutters

The heat in the fire will die

The love I have in my heart for you

continues bye and bye

The Printed Word

When my husband opens the door
And there is no newspaper lying on the doormat
He always wants to know why.
Because the boy’s bicycle got punctured
Because the truck overturned
Because it rained and the news is now papier mache
Because the old man next door forgot that only his newspaper is his —
He drools and sneezes so, do you really want it back?
But mostly because I got up early
And brought it in
And read it while the world was yet still and grey
And before he folded it wrong
And made it smell of cigarettes
And generously offered me random pages
Which sets my teeth on edge
And then I saw the time and left it in my cupboard on a pile of shirts
and I ran for the bus and when I get home in the evening and I hear my husband say:
You know that damn newspaper guy is really going to get it this time
I know I will lie shamelessly and say mmmhmmm
And sneak the paper into the bottom of the pile.

Once

Once, there were wings
And lakes to walk on with lily pad feet.

Once, there were ships in trees
And secret places.

In the darkness of old silk nights
We clicked beads against our teeth
And watched stars totter about the sky in high heels.

Now we sleep and wake and sleep and work and meet
Talking now and then of ships in trees,
Laughing.
I hear myself lie: “Be a child again? Me?
Oh no!”
But my hand strays to my pocket
Touches a feather
Remembers the patterns of bark pressed into my thighs.

Doing

Last night the moon rose in the east.
This morning the sun rose in the east.
Full, round, orange.
Last night I lay down to sleep.
This morning I woke up from sleep.
Wishing to be far away

From things that have to be done and
Said, and moved and held still.

The moon, the sun rose clear
Of brackets.
I straddle mine
Rocking rocking
Neither moving nor at rest.