Day Seven

Garden Wash by Dave Green

summer sun filters 

through the shady oak 

morning coffee  

~ Christina Chin 

Meguro International Haiku 

Baby waking

Six weeks old
her first day outside the city
grizzling after the long journey
I carry her across the meadow
beneath the trees by the stream.

I hear the grizzle change
to crooning chirrups weaving
among the bird songs
the feathered calls
and the burble of the water.

She lifts her head
eyes entranced by leaf movement
the dappled sky
light on green
oh the flash of wings.

There is wonder even now
scarce left the womb
eyes barely focused on the world
and already the world is wild¬—
the trees have claimed her.

-Jane Dougherty (She says of this poem “Our First grandchild came to visit yesterday”)

My Many Acts Of Random Wildness

7. I Make A Cuppa

Some say it is better with a warmed pot,
or with tea leaves through a strainer held
over a bone China cup. A specialist shop
had a bud float in my clear cup unfurled

before my eyes. Expensive and rare sight.
Indulgent, like days of Imperial
splendour when women tea harvester’s plight
long hours, low pay, working was very real.

My dad national service merchantman
mariner kept his life in the loft stored
in old tea chests, plywood box, steel battaned
edges. Brought home carved elephants for the sideboard.

We collect the wild as ornamental.
Domesticate, put it on a pedestal.

-Paul Brookes

Bios and Links

-Christina Chin

-Dave Green

lives and works in Sheffield.  For 30 years he worked in education with vulnerable and neurodiverse children before belatedly discovering that recent governments may not be prioritizing the marginalized in society.  Now he trains people in positive mental health and how to recover from the pandemic.  He writes poems, paints, chops logs, cycles everywhere and shops local.

Day Six

-Haiga by Christina Chin

frogs crooning

in the sheltered creek

rainsong

保護された川の蛙や雨の音　　

[tr. 中野千秋 Chiaki Nakano]

Meguro International Haiku 

-Christina Chin

-Garden Wash by Dave Green

My Many Random Acts Of Wildness

6. De-Rewilding

Wife says I must clear weeds and thorned nettles
from beneath our leafy Sycamore tree.
Long tendrils with large leaves test my mettle.
I fetch long loppers, clip back the crazy.

Thankyou to these large tough rigger gloves rip
out the spiked plants, uncover a smaller
Sycamore that needs pruning to its tip.
All the propellers have sprouted taller.

Not a tree hugger I apologise
to parent tree for uprooting it’s young
lopping off its limbs, being garden wise.
I tame it’s wilderness, curtail its sum.

My excuse is I am never on trend.
Older I get harder it is to bend.

-Paul Brookes

Bios and Links

-Christina Chin

-Dave Green

lives and works in Sheffield.  For 30 years he worked in education with vulnerable and neurodiverse children before belatedly discovering that recent governments may not be prioritizing the marginalized in society.  Now he trains people in positive mental health and how to recover from the pandemic.  He writes poems, paints, chops logs, cycles everywhere and shops local.

-Simon Zec