I admire my daughter’s vision. After weeks of cooking in a gazebo outside in the garden, carrying bowls of dirty dishes upstairs to the bathroom to wash up, no washing machine, a fridge in the living room, and hardly any space to swing a cat, she is still able to picture her finished kitchen. There’s […]
Tag: Haibun Monday
Keeping it Simple
Some couples don’t like to be the centre of attention but still want to celebrate their love. No flouncy dress, suits or bouquets for them, just casual attire in a local registry office, with only a couple of witnesses, and maybe a drink with friends and family in a nearby pub afterwards. They can’t afford […]
Journey
Next Monday I will be celebrating another milestone in my life journey, my seventieth birthday, with my sister. This entails a journey to the Isle of Wight, via Hastings, where we are meeting up with two friends I have known since I was eleven years old, one of whom turned seventy in March and the […]
Nettles and Bindweed
After several weeks of rain, the solstice has brought with it high temperatures and bright sunshine – accompanied by nettles and bindweed. The nettles are now taller than me and, as much as I like the bindweed’s white, trumpet-shaped flowers, known to children in the UK as ‘Granny-pops-out-of-the-bed’, their tendrils are winding themselves around everything. […]
I Remember
I remember, when I was a child, learning by heart the poem ‘I Remember, I Remember’, written by Thomas Hood in 1844. The opening lines stayed with me throughout my life, through many moves and different countries. I remember how the opening lines got me thinking: “I remember, I remember, / The house where I […]
A Month of Poems
April has been a busy month of poems. It takes dedication to keep up with NaPoWriMo while continuing with life as usual. I haven’t been sleeping well for a long time, waking up at strange o’clock and struggling to get back to sleep because of the lack of silence in my head as ideas, lines, […]
As a March Hare
We’ve had such a mixture of weather all through March that I don’t know whether I’m coming or going. One minute the sun shone and I left off my jumper, the next I was shivering and cursing wind and hail. No wonder the wildlife is confused. Luckily, it hasn’t affected the blossom and flowers in […]
Dark Matter
“dark matter is like the space between people”from Tracy K. Smith, ‘Life on Mars’, Graywolf Press, 2011 My friend Stephanie died last February. She moved to France several years ago, although we phoned and wrote to each other often. We first met when I was out walking my little terrier (who died eighteen years ago) […]
I didn’t know about Groundhog Day…
until I saw the film and, even then, it didn’t make much sense to me. We don’t have groundhogs in the UK and, these days, particularly where I live, not so much snow, for which I am grateful! What we do have is snowdrops, one of the signs of spring on which I know I […]
Hoping for an Epiphany
I cannot recall ever having an epiphany or a lightbulb moment, although I would welcome one at this moment in time, when the world has become dark, full of war and disaster, my cat is dying from cancer, it’s almost the anniversary of my mother’s death, and it is so cold – although today a […]
