an open field

This Single Thread Paul Chambers £10 available   from the author   and   Alba Publishing   things I have witnessed/ but failed to notice until/ this moment, here, now I have seen them in the orchard’s long grass – contour, flight, down – from magpies or wood pigeons, and once, the tawny remains of a buzzard. I have slipped them in my pocket or frozen them in a photograph. But now I am watching them move in my memory as dusk begins to shift towards night: evening wind a feather trembles in the grass  (p.11) And on those late train journeys home from London, lights from the back windows of terraced houses glittering past, wafers of smoky clouds shifting across the night sky:  overnight train a handprint smears the moon (p.68) Paul Chambers talks about haiku as ‘the art of noticing’ and each haiku in this collection is a quiet and precise record of the small moments that are common to us all. Or, if not common...