an open field

Thank you FT for choosing my haiku as your winning poem in your Workplace Haiku Competition this week, theme: the commute. Monday morning we share each other's rain “This could be read as a grouse,” notes our judge Jim Kacian, “But the words contain more: the poet chooses not to be isolated in that rain, but to share it and when we all share it, it is no longer the elements against us, but rather the elements uniting us in a common lot and a common fate.” Sunlight through raindrops

The Financial Times' workplace haiku competition is in its fourth week (of ten). Last week's theme - balancing work and home-life - netted me a runner-up place: weekend overtime the kids all smiling at me from a photoframe The discipline of a theme and deadline are proving good for my haiku writing: even if it's just an hour or so each week spent scribbling words and ideas.

Dream Date It's not going to work between me and Gerard Butler despite the way he hugs me, rocks me with his enthusiasm, his smile. Even though he turns away his ex-girlfriend who turns up in a gold lamé negligee. Even though he has a male assistant called Mitzi with a bald head. He has four dogs. He feeds them on broken biscuits and crackers. His house is a warren of tunnels and secret doors. And the forest fire is getting closer, flames wrapping the hillside, running down towards the edge of the lake, which may save us, or may not. His father was Spanish, he says quietly as we leave the house with only a picnic basket. Kind of Blue believing I loved him and all that fucking jazz Haibun Today Volume 8, Number 3, September 2014