Month: September 2023

A Feast of the Senses – chiming purple

Haiku by Farah Ali

drumbeat of rain
within the old boat
the odour of rust

**

chiming purple
a cascade of wisteria
sways in the breeze

**

frost glitters
across withered fields
how brittle
the sound of pale
winter sunlight

A Feast of the Senses – talking trees

Haiku by Edward Cody Huddleston, USA

longest night
the whiskey burns
a little colder

squirrels chattering
somewhere in the garage
my old walkie-talkies

talking trees—
the youngest hippie
branches out

A Feast of the Senses – the end of days

Haibun by Sally Quon, Canada

Fear

It was the fear, I suppose. Canada’s top doctor’s voice in the background, a public service announcement on an endless loop. Stay inside. Wash your hands. Keep six feet away from others at all times. A scene straight out of a sci-fi.


I still went to work every day. Empty streets in a tourist town, eerily quiet. Fear and anger that I was forced to leave the safety of my home. How was I an essential worker? All I did was babysit federal inmates in a halfway house. Either send them back or let them go. What’s a little more chaos in the world? It was the end of days.
As a disabled person, I always had my groceries delivered to me. When the pandemic hit, grocery stores were overwhelmed with panic buyers, overwhelmed with people signing up for home delivery. Unable to deal with the onslaught, my grocery order was cancelled. Cancelled.


That’s when I broke.


Everything made me cry. My son’s shaky voice on the phone as he described the empty shelves, news reports of bodies piling up too quickly to be properly disposed of. Beautiful Italian voices, singing across an empty courtyard late at night. These are the images that will remain with me for the rest of my life. Thoughts of my other child, alone a province away, where I couldn’t see him, touch him.
Disbelief, regret…and fear. Always fear.

the echo of voices
fades to silence –
still, the birds
 

Serenity

The air is hot and dry; road dust fills my nostrils, interrupted only by the fragrance of wild rose rising from the roadside, tangle and thorn, climbing its way to the sky.


I am seeking a place to stop and rest, somewhere cool and shady in the mountain pass. Spotting a small access road, I pull in. It’s a single, rogue campsite, next to a fast-moving stream – a small, sunlit glade surrounded by forest and cliff.


Making my way to the stream, I sit on a boulder, slip off my moccasins, and slide my feet into the icy water. Mist rises where the water comes off the rocks, froths and whirls, sending ripples shivering past my submerged feet.


Here the air is cool and sweet, new growth sprouts from deadfall, and birdsong fills the sky. There are fish in the clear water surrounding my feet.


But it’s the butterflies.


I have never seen so many butterflies. They circle me, darting out over the water, returning to the sun-speckled shade, all sizes, all colors, filling me with delight, and I am transformed.

mountain stream-
I dip my feet in
wash away the past

The Orchard

We camped in the orchard, beneath pear trees not yet ready to give up their fruit. High on a cliff overlooking the impossibly blue lake in all its shades of sky and cloud. We were young, barely beginning to blossom into the women we’d someday become, and in the part of life where friendship came on wings of jubilation, and nothing could go wrong.

But that night, storm clouds gathered. Lightning lit the night, and the thunder shook the earth so tremendously I feared the cliff we were perched on would fall away into the turbulent waters below. We held each other, tasting fear, until the dawn.

I should have known then nothing perfect remains unchanged.

dawn breaks
over a blanket of fragrant
fallen blossoms