an open field

again this year the wind-sown poppies flower between stones The Haiku Calendar 2010 ( Snapshot Press , 2009)

so obvious things were falling apart when I had to walk up the street with a plateful of red pesto dressing to find out what had happened to my salad, though my haute couture dress — an off the shoulder taffeta Gina Lollobrigida little number in wine and black — was particularly appropriate for the restaurant, the army of Italian men appearing / disappearing through doors, but I couldn’t find the one in the silver suit who’d approved of my choice of sun-blush tomatoes, roasted aubergines, peppered salami, and had to speak to a woman with black eyebrows who was busy stacking up billowing leaves of oversized lettuce — radicchio, sweetheart, frisée — so I decided on a sandwich instead, buffalo mozzarella and black olives on ciabatta, and no, not toasted, or open, just give me the bloody sandwich will you, banging my fists on the glass counter, attracting the attention of a ginger-headed freckled Italian in pinstripes who smiled too much when he apologised, glanced down at my shoes. It was...

the sound of the sea speaking to my mother on her birthday Joint 2nd Prize With Words International Online Haiku Competition (2009)

The weeping willow, despite its name, its curtain of low-sweeping boughs, does not weep over what is lost,does not grieve. after her death watching the rain meeting the river Beneath the bark, a layer of living cells divides and multiplies, expanding sapwood and heartwood, stretching the bark until it cracks and sheds to fit the new girth. laughter lines— the scar around my breast faded now Growth: out into the world, down into the dark earth, and up into the light. Contemporary Haibun Volume 10 Red Moon Press 2009