A taste of summer

I just bought my first strawberries of the season. They smell so good. On the way home, in the warm car, I held them on my lap while my husband drove. The car filled up with that sweet strawberry scent.

We grow a few strawberries – little wild ones that self-seed round the garden – looking for them feels like a treasure hunt – and bigger ones that are lost to wildlife half the time. They’re all still white petalled flowers at the moment – not even tiny, hard, green fruit. The berries I bought were grown in a greenhouse in Herefordshire – small, artificial summers. Today, I don’t care. We’ll eat them with cream and a sprinkling of sugar, and we’ll know that summer is just around the corner. We’re teetering on the edge of it, ready to fall.

sunshine
the dancing of bees
ripening fruit

A haibun for Frank at dVerse. We’re considering summer…

Blossom – haibun for dVerse

While everything else is wondering whether spring is on its way or not, the wild cherry in the top corner makes a leap of faith. White blossoms, splashed with palest pink at their heart, they cluster together, dancing in the wind.

first step
into sunlight
blinking

A haibun for Frank at dVerse. Is there anything more appropriate to haibuns than cherry blossoms?

Snowdrops

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The first snowdrops are here. They cling to the edges of the field, the way snow clings to a window frame. Like snow, they linger in the shade. They are the whitest thing I know – whiter than frost, whiter than the moon, whiter than snow itself. They are winter, and the end of winter; cold, and the promise of spring.

heads hanging
whispering secrets
shivering

A haibun for Frank at dVerse.

Celebration!

Sometimes these are the best celebrations – the times you find yourself in someone’s kitchen, and somebody’s chopping onions, and somebody’s fixing drinks, and you’re talking and laughing, and it’s much later than you intended, and there’s nothing at all to celebrate, except this. This moment, right here right now.

cold beer
burritos
laughter

A haibun for dVerse – the first of 2022.

Haibun: gratitude.

I started a gratitude journal a few weeks ago, at a time when it was hard to feel grateful. It’s gently morphed into something slightly different – this is the place where I write down the moments that make me stop and absorb. I’m grateful for those moments because for a breath, a pause, a heartbeat, I am taken out of myself. I forget myself.

What I realised a couple of days ago is that these are haiku moments. The moments we step outside of time, the moments we want to share with the universe.

an oak tree
a circle of gold
autumn ends

A haibun for Frank at dVerse. We are thinking about thankfulness in this Thanksgiving week.

August: haibun for dVerse

August begins and ends with a public holiday. It’s a month of dreams and disappointments.

August smells of hot fat and seaweed. It tastes of vanilla, woodsmoke and cheese sandwiches. August drips ice-cream, sits in traffic jams, laughs loudly. August plays the neon muzak in the amusement arcade, clamours like gulls, patters rain on the caravan roof. August is a pint of cider, a can of lager, a glass of pink fizz. August is Pac-a-macs and crushed crisps and village fetes and bunting and sandcastles and sun-hats and fleecies and the first blackberry and a sudden, mad dash into the sea.

grains of sand
waves roll endlessly
harvest gathered

For dVerse

First blossom

The tree in the top corner is always the first to blossom. Its blossoms are the palest of all – the faintest wash of pink. It’s badly placed, battling with alder and birch to find light. Everything around it is brown. Buds are starting to swell, but the other trees are holding back, contemplating things. There may yet be frost, the nights are cold, we are still teetering on the edge of spring. While they hesitate, the wild cherry leaps in, joyfully, its blossoms a valiant, defiant banner of hope.

first blossom
are these snowflakes
or petals?

A haibun for Frank at dVerse, on the classic subject of cherry blossom.

Eagle Haibun – dVerse

I have always liked those old lecturns made in the shape of eagles. I like the idea that words will fly into the distance, that they will soar above us, that they have their own power. Give words wings, let them fly.

rising on sunlight
seeing the earth spread below
spotting a mouse dart

A haibun for Frank Tassone at dVerse, where our theme is eagles.

Day 2: Finger of Light

iron earth so cold
sugar-touched rusted bracken
frosted grass splinters

reel towards the sun once more
draw light into darkened vales

foreshadowed healing
sacred flesh, innocent blood
divinity’s touch

belief and faith glow prayer-like
candle flame searing the night

grey stone archway frames
arrow-like finger of light
piercing this dark heart

© Freya Pickard 2020

Freya Pickard is the Author of The Kaerling series, an epic fantasy set in the world of Nirunen. She writes mainly fantasy tales, with some poetry thrown in. She has published 14 e-books and 6 paperbacks and finds her inspiration in the ocean, beautifully written books and vinyl music. She blogs at https://dragonscaleclippings.wordpress.com and https://purehaiku.wordpress.com

It’s a joy to have Freya here. She curates beautiful collections of haiku on a regular basis – worth looking out for. If you enjoyed this tanka-haiku-reverse tanka you might like to check out her latest fantasy novel:

The Day of Weird – volumes one to three of The Kaerling

Pursued by villagers for angering the gods, Otta seeks to evade capture whilst following the Unicorn’s Trail.

“This is the gritty version of what a Western setting of Avatar the Last Airbender would look like.” X Mankum

Otta must deal with the dark side of her character and the memory loss of her twin, as the influence of the foreign ambassadors, the kaerlings, becomes more pronounced. The god’s commands must be obeyed and Otta finds herself on the southern plains before the true meaning of the Unicorn’s Trail is revealed. The Day of Weird is a paperback containing the first three volumes of The Kaerling which are also available as separate e-books: Silver Fire, Ambassador and An Ancient Song.

Purchase link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Day-Weird-Kaerling-Volumes-Three/dp/1701251124/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=freya+pickard&qid=1579688474&sr=8-2

Going down to the bay

It’s just a short hike from the car, and then a scramble down the cliff path. It’s slippery, and overgrown – you have to clutch at branches to help you down, and you have to take it easy. There are the traces of old steps, and a place where someone’s set a rope to help you. Keep going. Be careful.

The bay itself faces due west, and curves like a hug. It’s a beach of rounded stones, mostly grey, some with quartz lines running through them. Today there are seals watching us curiously, sleek and shiny in the water. We stretch and breathe.

land creatures
drawn to the blue water
seal looks back

A haibun for Frank at dVerse