Haiku 77

Haiku 77

Hail the joyous Fall

When the leaves do tumble down

Followed by the banks

Haiku 76

Haiku 76

How green is the grass

Which layers the Autumn ground

Pigment-rich from rain

Thank You And Damn You JGC

Damn you JGC. It happens every time I go ten-pin bowling. You step up onto the lane wearing those ridiculous shoes with your fingers plunged deep inside a Bakelite sphere. You have no idea what you are doing and after you have released the ball you are just glad that it hasn't taken your fingers with it. And then some supernatural force guides the bowling ball down the lane, crashes it into the pins which collapse like perfectly detonated cooling towers. "A strike" someone shouts and, being of a certain age, you quickly check to see if the cafeteria staff are still working. And then you realise that you have, accidentally, done rather well. If you can do as well as that by sheer chance, what will the results be like if you try, if you think about it, if you refine your action? And you spend the rest of the evening watching your ball trundle down the side alley. The pins become monoliths which will remain standing for centuries.

So thank you JGC for your kind words about my Haiku. Thank you and damn you.

Leaving all poetic pretensions aside, I took up my old occupation of trawling the highways and byways of the Internet in search of joyful stimulation. And I discovered the website of the the auctioneers, Bonhams. What is wonderful about it is that the full catalogues for all the individual auctions are available on-line (these are the things which used to cost an arm and a gavel and therefore to have free on-line access to them is yet another reason to fall down in praise in front of the great web-God).

The catalogue I looked at was for the "Collectors' Sale of Potlids, Goss and Crested China, Commemoratives Art & Antiques". As with all such things, the real exotica can be found at the end of the catalogue so I quickly turned to the final lot, Lot 1304 "A bench seat with painted wrought iron frame, together with a stone bust of a man on a fluted plinth". Now I badly want this item. I think of little else all day (Alexander, who is Alexander?). I picture the bench seat on my yellow balcony. I imagine long conversations with the man on a fluted plinth. I rediscover my muse.

Haiku 75 On a cold dark night A man on a fluted plinth Pines for a bidder

The Windows On The Bus

I used to be a bus conductor. Have I told you that before? (He has only been gone for three days and already I am talking to the computer!). This was back in the days of back-loading, open-platform buses. I would balance myself against the pole with my leather change bag slung low around my hip and ring the bell with a practiced hand. It was a job of alternating extremes : on a clear and crisp Spring morning there were few finer feelings than trundling over the moorland roads of West Yorkshire. But on Saturday nights when the majority of your customers were drunk and mildly disorderly, there were few worse jobs. When the weather was poor, I would abandon my open platform and stand inside watching Halifax and its environs pass by. When things were quiet I would go up onto the top deck and take one of the front seats and look down on the world.

I was thinking of all this yesterday as I caught the bus into Huddersfield. I was remembering the days when buses had windows rather than advertising sites. Get on any bus in West Yorkshire nowadays and try to look out of the window and if you are lucky you might catch a glimpse of the world through breaks in advertising placards which, for some reason, the bus company chooses to plaster on all available windows. It is not that the adverts earn revenue or provide any useful information. They are annoying reminders - in 2,000 point cursive font - that the blasted bus runs every 20 minutes or some such nonsense.

So yesterday, when I should have been looking out of the window, I had to compose post-Xan Haiku No. 74 instead. Here it is :

Haiku 74

Frosted bus windows

Hide the cold-clamped world outside

And seal me from harm.

Haiku 73

So he has gone. Get over it. Get a life. He's only 35 miles down the road. It is not the end of the world.

It is the Monday morning following the weekend when Alexander went off to University. For the first time in almost nineteen years he is not going to be around on a daily basis. However, so far, he has kept his promise to keep in touch and we cannot complain that his phone calls tend to be at 2.30 in the morning. Sheffield is in a different time-zone after all. Between phone calls and texts I must find something to occupy myself with. Out of the bundle which is my Sunday newspaper falls the Guardian Supplement on Writing Poetry and I see a section on the Japanese concept of Haiku. The description runs as follows:

"HAIKU : A form originating in Japan, where it traditionally evokes emotion through natural imagery, with reference to a particular season. In English, it consists of three lines of five, seven and five syllables".

I remember many years ago knowing a chap who used to claim that he would always try to compose a sonnet every day as a form of mental exercise. I was impressed by this claim. It seemed to be something quite admirable, something you could do whilst drinking a pint in a pub, something that would make good use of the backs of old envelopes. Mind you, a fourteen line sonnet is ambitious and a project that should only be turned to once there has been a major discontinuity in ones' life, like the pub closing down or Blanche in Coronation Street passing on. For Alexander leaving home a three-line Haiku is much more suitable.

So here is the first of my post-xan Haiku's.

Haiku 73

Autumn spreads like jam

On the crusts of summer mud

Toasted by the sun.