Published by Shoestring at Shakespir
Copyright 2017 Pam Crane
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My Haiku to you
Are three dry lines of private
Washing in public
Tales tall as bamboo,
Media streams, music groves,
Zip – and are Haiku
Thinking of Haiku -
Dandelion parachutes
Tickle my eyelids
Haiku
Are catching – I sneeze
A small drama
My attention span
too short for frivolity
I make Senryu
I read books backwards
Of course I write
Haiku
America sleeps
Dewdrops on the web, Haiga
A site for sore eyes
Arranging pebbles
Trapping fire in a raindrop
Crafting Senryu
Inner life uncorks
Showering tiny poems
Over the kitchen
Great grey lake, your hills
yawn from long excursions, towns
wet with souvenirs
Volcanic dusk falls
swallows towns flies dark swift feeds
clover’s tiny lamps
Cloud-copying peaks -
Vesuvio, Verzasca,
Veils of Everest
Buffeted, sprayed, joy
Braced for wind over lake – look
How bamboos curtsey!
The land is getting
Tall. Mountainous trees. Sheep kneel,
Clouds greet ripe heather
Betws, Christmas frost
Moonlight over Mercedes
What dizzy arcades!
Blaenau late – rain, slate,
sleet, waste shale,train hail, Wales wheels
blindly through blue tales
Jigsaw cows, fierce gold
Furze banked high on speedwell sky
The pied house is sold
Silent moor so high
We bump our heads on the sky
If we fall, we die
Through my eyelids red
Glows then amber then green – dark
Follows. Going home.
Winter filigree -
Stack, tree, plant, pylon; by night
Palaces of light
Huge gold sun cloud-crowned
Behind twinkling Runcorn
Crowding birds wing home
Trail-blazing at dusk
Flights west grazing my mountains.
Below, slow lights home.
Wales wild under cloud
Sprinkled with sheep, splashed with cows
Green green grass of home
The frisky sea
BMW sport
White horses
Eyes tuned to rogue stone,
Rock ribbed, curls in cleft strata -
Mind the dragons’ teeth!
Boy printing the turf
With stolen pieces of a
Stranger’s name
Silhouette on a
Path to Heaven, happy dog,
The sun goes to bed
Beach-ball -
Blue muscle of sea
Flexing
Larch lace emeralds
In April sun butterflies
Long lake of sapphire
Spring mountains muffled
Crouch for warmth over wildfire -
Gorse-gold is stunning
Bright silhouettes
Succumbing to pier pressure
Small ices dripping
North, peacock ocean;
Turning South – mountainous Wales
In shimmering waves
Huddling weather;
Cloud-smoke low in the forest
Breath of nereids
April – the colours!
Bluebell sky, Great Orme gorse-lit,
In such peacock sea!
(15/04/05)
Sheep back to back
Not speaking.
Beware of lambs!
Through the windscreen
A postcard of Ingleborough
No need to stop
Going away -
Watching the evening news
In another room
Foxgloves are spotted inside -
Next to the
Couch potatoes
The rapture of May !
Her buttercup thighs spread wide
Swaledale receives us
The Yorkshire Dales -
Dry stone, wagtails, copper beech,
Cow Parsley. Squashed rabbits.
May – white bridal dream,
Ferns, green overarching green,
Gifts of clotted cream
In birthday pink
Great flat drifts from haven to
Heaven of sweet thrift
Above Glossop
The heavy swell of the moors
Space to stretch the soul
Into the mountains,
Asking the way – the farmer
Stinks of cigarettes
Undulating dusk -
Childhood journeys returning
Village by village
Ferry in the rain
Catbells a cauldron, Lodore
And time in spate
Driving through country
In which I long to stand still
And root with the trees
Suddenly drive through
A Simon Palmer painting,
Cathedral of trees
On Bowland summit
Sheep grazing in cloud
Into the unknown
Honister sunswept
Studded scarlet with rowan
Awe is redefined
The poet returns,
Hugged by mountains, rain-rapt, past
Roped to the future
Untame everything -
park to Wilderness, soft ride
to battle-hard sole
Dangerous corner,
Ice-cream van ready to pounce,
Cones all down the road!
youth oblivious
treks Lakeland, grey knees crack,
real folk farm in wonder
Over the high fells
Every hill has its own cloud
Every tree its shade
We leave. The fells weep.
Keswick goes on without us.
My heart is breaking.
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The oyster and I
Needing some grit in the shell
Her story my pearl
Madam Many-chins
Insists on salad, and eats
Her husband’s last chips
Thunder on Mountain -
The superior woman
Has sold her TV
Paint in words the rich
Smell of ripe red nectarines,
Fill the room with rot
Watery life hides:
the crab shelters, fish disguise.
The scorpion spies…
When all minds concur
The carp embraces his hook
And the horse his spur
When all words are one,
A saint may take up the sword
And a captive run.
one man breaks away,
His friends may ostracise him yet
conspiracy fails
The child is crying.
Look! Money in the window!
This is a cake shop…
Springtime, boys bounce balls;
Young men fancy tobacco -
Gulls a cormorant
Suddenly parallel
Racing along the skyline
Seven on horses
Between sky and sand
One flying line of dark script
The sentence of death
Far from the causeway
Film framed in a car window
One minute and gone
‘‘Organic meat
One mile ahead’‘. The road bends -
A gift of flowers
In Chester, grey, alone,
He eats with orchids, folding
Maps of the New Forest
Flying ants -
Behind her lightweight suitcase
Small girl struggling
Her vast brown cleavage,
Wild places full of fireweed
Grab the attention
Snow on the pansies -
the people who always sent
birthday cards are dead
Home from a fun-fair,
Clutching hot dogs, huge prizes,
Rude balloons
stretching one small wing
in sunlit quartz and fuschia
a sparrow preening
Later on a bridge
The same two white vans having
A conversation
On the seaside train,
Racing the straight seaside road,
A passenger waves
June water-meadows,
Many-coloured horses drinking,
My life flashing past
Through twin trees, harebells -
Carrying clouds shoulder-high
The Ben broods on blue
Pen dipped in gold
Riding a river of light
Mountains and rainbows
Cordylines and frost
Lone mermaid remembering
Seashells live and die
Big as the Sun
Slow in the evening mist
One balloon, setting
(Holyhead train 21/09/08)
The echo of rock -
Hoof on shale on stone – Fissure:
Blinding citadels!
One wet pink rose bends
To watch me with the green hose
At dusk moths and frogs
Everything sparkles
Slowly the mountains shrink as
The town approaches
May: clout-casting time
North winds killing the lilacs
My sons are strangers
Fecund, her feet arch
Like Manet’s Olympia
In scarlet satin
The purple woman
Leaves rustling bustling
Bursts of plastic rain
Goldfinches lunching
Sharp starlings March wind twirling
Sparrow carousels
Enormous women
Browsing tiny spring outfits
Visiting pigeons
mad March air hot cross
mums battling british aisles
the buggy grand prix
Carnival season -
He picks over the golf balls
Like Mum checking spuds
Twin pram, one baby,
Lone Dad smiling – did the bears
Get the other one?
Jenny, eleven,
Barks at dragons in the sun
Shrieks of the children
Weighed down by penguins
And remorse, Mrs. BigBag
Drowning with dolphins
Step into the voice
Behind her bent teeth, drab hair,
Live the deep truth there.
Mayday! the child’s plane
Dives – our heroes flying home
Remember Munich.
Time in reflection
Mirrors that face each other
Scales fall from our eyes
People without words
Fake snakes behind hungry eyes
Begin to tell lies
Poor little Mum’s boy
Since Death cheated you of praise
Willies and tombstones
You sell your whole life
To keep him from death. Fish with
Blood on their faces
The Fall, changed world, then
Slow blood, breath snatched, old cold bones
The dead of Winter
Slowly, lovingly
Nature grew this bird, this bean -
Handle them gently
Capital frozen
Bare markets cold turkey pm
Scotch on the rocks
Curtains. We have hurled
Our whole lives headlong into
A virtual world
Queuing in Barclays
One – two – three – four blue ladies
In hoods. No more pens!
Ambulance on call
Beating in perfect time wings
Soaring and falling
Wind over water
Principalities, Powers
Danger to shipping
Dragging me through the
Ultimate obscenity,
Ashes of voices
Ruin and Death are
Grey – bright life’s shocked orange choir
Fled, all colour bled
Swastika dances -
Little girls carefully taught
To die as they’re told
Crush bar, powder room,
Flop house, crash pad, broken home,
The earth moved for us
A head rolls
In Iraq – at the Mirror
A head rolls
Baghdad
Fleet Street
Heads sacked
Unprotected txt
Junk males capital litter
Vowel cancer
Blackcurrant time, dusk -
Sky on fire, mountains on fire,
Leaves scream in the wind
This was your Rapture;
I hope you were satisfied -
Thousands in Heaven.
Noon, Saddleworth Moor -
Vistas to die for. Somewhere,
The bones of children
Gales and May blossom
I was killed again today
They bring cut flowers
Today is crying
Even the seabirds muted
Your face was yellow
There is too much pain
To put into words. I weep
For broken China.
Broken promises -
The pied piper of Szechuan
Came for your children
Sweet girl, sleep softly -
Rock pillows, concrete coverlet
Be my lost embrace
Break time, the end of lessons,
No more school.
Screaming.
May ’08 – crunch time.
Walls fall, roofs and men cave in,
Little lives aborted.
The eye of Heaven
Sees you, mean strawberry thief,
And the drowned thousands
Threatening thunder
Red mist blood on the carpet
The clash of antlers
Thursday – Betws train.
Snow printed, child pacified.
Haiti in ruins.
The 42nd
Mother’s Day without a card
Or a daffodil
coma – I’m inside
my locked home, not answering,
waiting for daylight
too hot and too high
only time runs out – what’s left
burning and crying
interviewing pain
in 17 syllables
safer in prison
Strangely configured
My parents’ old furniture -
Continuity
No more blue snow
Next to people who loved him
Our fox chose to die
‘Zach’s back!’ Joyous the
Conference of Star-Fathers
We cannot attend
Old hands breaking the
Last of the Ospringe bayleaves
Pavarotti died.
Sidereal Mars -
My splitting head, the bombed plane,
Your tears on my phone
Stretchers passing me;
Young blood runs with mine in a
Theatre of war
American friends
Hang in the Kentish air
Healers are coming
Eleven a.m.
Mourning yesterday, today stops
I have just started
Under the carnage
A front page ad for the car
Soon closing my road
The grief of children
Heart-breaking.The naked trees.
The wreaths. The black cars.
The spirits who made
These bodies beautiful are flown
We weep over bone
Led to the last seat
I stood by your side; your grave
Received my red rose.
No-one remembered
It was my fun friend who died -
I have stopped singing
We walked, and smiled…
In Folkestone tunnel my husband
Picked up your pieces.
Rewind time – the friend
Distraught, steps, the broken head -
God, give back Nancy
No telegram -
Among the ashes
Only her plastic smile
Immaculately
Turned out now in watered silk
At God’s beck & call
Sept.04 – 30/09/04)
Boxes everywhere
Closed, open, inside, outside
Empty, full of air
Inbox outbox mail
Pillar to post redacting
Filing shredding us
Think out of the box
Where you can cut to the chase
And other clichés
Beware of the box
Lest sprung free grimacing Jack
Give you a heart attack
A box on the ear
Damaging but in the groin
Saving your lunch box
Junction boxes or
Box junctions – you enter them
both on pain of death
Serve your penalty -
Finally out of the box
Hope springs eternal
Into the black box
Secret thousands of Xes
Kisses or crosses
Orange in the rocks
Not human debris this time
Witness the Black Box
Box … box … box this lap
Don’t kill the lollipop man
Win from the pit lane
One green Ferrari
Parked F1 Hybrid never
Leaves its box
At the theatre
Poor folk sit up in the Gods
The Queen in a box
Raising the Tempest
Needs a taller Prospero
Fetch an orange box
Get on the ladder
Choccy-box cottages tick
Box after perfect box
In your Jewel Box
Nothing to match the cluster
Of heaven’s diamonds
Shoe-box cigar-box
Gift box squirreling treasures
Nothing is wasted
Next to the toy box
A dressing-up box – watch out
For teddies in drag
Without the one man
In the box trains crash queens die
And no Dr. Who
In front of the box
Watching your world go by – soon
You will leave in one
O Lady – sapphire
Amid birds and bells – hold high
Your golden thunder
In thrilling palms, live
Lightning carries the holy
Word down God’s mountain
Thunder over Lake -
Men, fireworks, no sleep. No sleep!
Dawn storm! God’s are best!
Gold Sun God, O laugh
out loud as you net the heart’s
highway with free light
Mountain Seraphim
Hymn in opalescent fire
A Holy sunset
The storm of Heaven
So flooded my spring with Love
Even the Sun drowns!
Man whose skin fell off
Under the scourge of karma
God whose skin fell off
Beaten back across
Time raw passion bred of life
Dyes history red
Beyond the gate his
Blood spatters a rising moon
The world shatters
Sunset bloody moon
Crosses out Love, all square now
Until the next time
Skinned alive, the Lamb
Imploring me beyond sobs…
I cannot save you
A few red letters
Weigh down millennia with
Clarifications
A few red letters
Millennia
Of footnotes
Christmas is over -
Supermarket hot cross buns
Scent the New Year
A tear falls.
A pearl forms.
A prayer rises.
Five lines in the blue
At C sharp the Sunday sun
Feast with an octave
Whether to join in -
Murder in the Cathedral
Salve vagina
Even a whisper
Rings too loud. Hushed by Cuthbert
Our old lives steal back
Only God is perfect.
Now I know why
I never finish the wall-papering
Rosslyn in the rain
Lightning indoors, magic lace,
Beauty & breath caught
In my old habit
Sitting on warm stone to hear
The Word I gilded
So near my old cell
Tears well for another wake
Disturbing the lake
How will Mind create
Heaven in our image without
Murdering the world?
Butchered Judas tree
Kiss goodbye to your cold crown.
Have I betrayed you…?
Cybele’s lion
Wounds me Once Felicia
Offered violets
Vast lawns? Cropped heather.
A cell, not gold. Bright foxes.
God’s dance in my heart
Trapping the Nightmare,
Naming it, I nail its rage
To Love’s mighty Cross.
Wheel to wheel
God’s fingertip from Adam
Inseparable
Years of ecstasies
Then you arrived and I stopped
Writing poetry
Having Aspergers
Isn’t the end of the world:
Invert selection …
Every living soul
The perfect inflorescence
Of one bud of God
A man goes whistling,
A woman without tea; numen shines,
House-light is happy.
In a cheesenet trapped,
Twelve little dark fishy things -
Their name escaped me!
Nettle-fume that curled
from webs has met its Angel
in an opal Heaven
Low-slung sun, god-gold
I.D. disk swings in my eyes,
Aten remembers me!
All my life I was
A winter child; my spring comes,
Full moon melting snow
Why, why, why? -
Swale & Wales
Pam Pam Pam!
Red May
Her second brood
My two duvets
Under my toes
The new gravel
Last year’s begonia
Seaside G&T
‘‘Listen – a cuckoo!’‘
It is two o’clock
Looking for heaven
I move, and dream of moving
Mountains and thunder
Under my window
Chattering, laughing, fighting
People and sparrows
The pink taste – rosehips,
luminous quince, clear bright beads
of pomegranate
Under a full moon
My frogs croon – our dreaming doves
Mourn transfigured loves
Wet cave, frog peeping,
Elephant washing – my pool,
My piece of heaven
Song
Of a light plane -
Summer high
My garden Buddha
Crowned with a summer goldfinch
Now I can meditate
Our friend’s funeral -
One butterfly in the sun
And purple flowers
In the twelfth autumn
Preparing quinces; the breeze,
My mother’s perfume
Autumn.
My hair is falling.
Nearly sixty-two,
Bemused by bone, dying stars,
Dumbfounding I Am
All wrapped up -
The first winter drifts
Whiten the hall floor.
At sunset, grateful
To have been part of this brief
Human miracle
Spring tinnitus – rain
over lunch, plans, muzak, all
Falling on deaf ears
Cold May, clouts not cast;
One experimental rose
Amid the bird scraps
Painting the Chapel -
Yet another Monday gone
Without Tai Chi
Drowsy rituals -
Scrabble, Astropocket -
Unread magazines
Am I eating soap?
Goat’s yoghurt and strawberries
This odd June evening
Bluebells! eleven
Under my quince – the loved Sun
Blessed with a halo
Wind off Great Orme’s Head
History streams old eyes blue
As the Med in May
Just resting is good -
Horses nibble each other,
My costume waiting
Quince blossom, moonlight
I wait for his late white car
Ghostly, a seagull
Forty-four summers
Remembering your birthday
Forgotten pictures
Blown Ceanothus
Blackie is after my worms
Digging in blue snow
Down by the dead pool
Faded confetti – half-term
Pantomime wedding
The Sunday service -
Norman on organ, young Daz
On coffee machine
The dark is lighter -
Despite the mask, my skin
Feels silver with birdsong.
Beside my window
The clutter of people’s lives
Passing at sunset
Yesterday’s breakfast
Haunts me – Yes, it’s time I fell
In love with toothpaste!
Out in a hailstorm
Birds scattering seed. Indoors
I spill peppercorns
Two more tiny lights
And all the stars of the Plough
Burn in my bedroom
Saturn Ascendant.
Frost, Vick – too late for garlic.
I can’t hear my clock.
Even in the sun
Prom white with frost, a new year
Crunching underfoot
Diamond bare twigs
Full of nithering starlings
Nearly my birthday
I miss fluffy snow
Knee deep, still, muffling wheels -
I want my world back
Unmoved by mountains
Theme-park snow, too far to touch
Winter is hearsay
Brief reunions
Two leaves caught in an eddy
Floating and drowning
My glorious wife
The golden face of my son
Histories later
Spinning a light line
I catch you with your bright tail
Plunge into your sea
The light on the Orme
In my garden sapphire snow
Homeward donkey bells
Early shift. First bird.
Still the blue lights, men searching.
My feet are freezing.
Peeholes in the snow
our poor eyes puzzling head
and the heart dancing
So loud through my wall
The voices of the neighbours
Who never hear me
Saturn square Pluto
Black ice on the road black ice
On my winter road
That suspenseful joy
Of not quite seeing the sea
Salt on a railing
Inside I am five
Crying to print virgin snow
The sea stole from me
dancing with fiddles
Joyously stamping chiming
rhyming with fiddles
Ageing I run down
More in my charging cradle
Than this well-worn palm
Pruning – a loud car;
Their red balloon bounds by me.
Square Mars, Aries Moon.
Pam has been a poet since she was seven years old; it was only when she joined her local Writers’ Club that she found she could also write short stories.
She has been a Christian astrologer for most of her life, is well known in that community, and is the author of two books plus many articles in the Astrological Association Journal (for which she compiles the regular Cryptic Crossword.)
You can find her website at http://revpamcrane.weebly.com.
Haiku and Senryu are both tiny seventeen-syllable poems that paint a word picture of a moment in time and space. This Japanese form has been a favourite with Pam Crane for many years, building up into a verse journal - and often replacing a forgotten camera! Haiku are strictly concerned with seasons and the natural environment; Senryu can express anything - a mood, an event, an idea, even a joke. They have become so popular in the West that both versions are now erroneously called Haiku in the media, and questions on BBC TV's 'Pointless' quiz are often framed as 'Haiku' (though this makes them very difficult to read!)