A December Tanka

‘Winter’ … WHB – Pen & Ink 2017 

 

Bright the winter sun

Burns in the short day’s heaven

As each day goes by

I think of Bethlehem’s star

Wishing the year ‘Au Revoir’.

 

Tanka is a genre of classical Japanese poetry meaning a short poem, and one of the major genres of Japanese literature.

A Tanka consist of five units (often treated as separate lines when romanized or translated) usually with the pattern of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables per unit or line). Wikipedia.

I have again ended my Tanka with a rhyming couplet.

A November Tanka

Photo by Matt Hardy on Pexels.com

 

Dark the days are now

Winter bites as we look on

In November’s clothes

Breeding hope and dulling pain

Will we see this month again?

 

Tanka is a genre of classical Japanese poetry meaning a short poem, and one of the major genres of Japanese literature.

A Tanka consist of five units (often treated as separate lines when romanized or translated) usually with the pattern of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables per unit or line). Wikipedia.

I have here ended my Tanka with a rhyming couplet

 

 

 

The Dead Tree

Photo: WHB, 2019  … Knighthayes, Tiverton, Devon  ©

Bold and boastful,
Big and brash,
A mighty marvel still.
A splendid giant
Holding court
Bestride that verdant hill.

Imperious, noble,
Still a lord
Of field and hill and view.
Its commanding presence
Memorial to
All that once was new.

Never forlorn,
The strength of years
Still lingers in those limbs.
A memory,
A masterpiece,
Even as the vision dims.

‘The Fruits of Autumn’ – A Haiku

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

 

Stay and drink the wine

Culled from the fruits of autumn

Nature’s piquant gift

 

Photo by Markus Spiske temporausch.com on Pexels.com

 

Reverie #10: A Day to Sink my Teeth in

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Give me a day to sink my teeth in,
A bright and sunny day.
Let me savour sensuous hours,
Keep the end at bay.

Let me live each vibrant moment,
Reach out to stars above.
Threads of serious satisfaction
Seeking more time to love.

Tell it as it really is,
A song that does make sense.
Strapping lasses dancing –
Heated… Drunk… Intense.

A joy
A pleasure rising
Milking each waking hour.
Keeping at bay those moments
When doom and history lour.

And so my days are passing,
Steeped in the certain thought
That time has dealt me aces,
And has been richly bought.

Nature’s Cavalcade

Samuel Palmer -The valley Thick With Corn

When Hopkins gloried in dappled things
He must have thought of angels’ wings
Of gossamer and cuckoo spit
Of candles flicker-lit

As Palmer did
In silent chapels
In Kentish fields

 

Of darkening woods
where sunlight hides
In sheepland pastures

On downy hills

In buttercup meadows
Where linnet trills

The silent raptures
Of sunset light
On autumn trees
Where swoops the kite

And evening captures
The thickening shadows

The cooling breeze
Midst fields of golden rippling corn
That now adorn the rustic scene

Such glory in apple blossom seen

As they, with Blake,
Held in their hand
Those grains of sand
To wonder more
How Nature’s glory
Explains itself
In storm
And stillness
In calm and frenzy
Light and shade
In setting sun
And mounting moon

The evening’s glaze
In bounteous harvest
Nature’s cavalcade

Autumn Leaves: A Tanka

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

A whisper is heard

In the silence of the wood

The world is not still

As autumn leaves gently fall

Carpeting the forest floor

 

Tanka is a genre of classical Japanese poetry meaning a short poem, and one of the major genres of Japanese literature. 

A Tanka consist of five units (often treated as separate lines when romanized or translated) usually with the pattern of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables per unit or line). Wikipedia

Reverie #9: Echoes of the Past

Pen & Ink – WHB … Northern Hills

I need to listen to that hidden sound of silence
the murmur that thrills lost souls
and as it swells
reverberates among those distant heathered hills

I crave to hear it burgeon on that lonely land
that misty moor of distant memory
where dwell lush images of the Green Hill
of the High Cliff
the Cass Rock
the Apple Garth
and the bubbling burbling beck
its red waters blooding its banks
with reminders of its ferrous track

A distant memory
rising from deep beneath those ancient northern hills
born of Nature’s cycle
birthed in ironstone
and nurtured in those recurring dreams of my youth
and the lasting images of my old age

Samuel Palmer’s ‘Evening Church’

Samuel Palmer’s Evening Church

 

In the summer evening’s stillness
under the calm
of the the sickle moon
Evensong is softly sung.
The gentle breeze
catching only the occasional sigh
On the evening’s air.
The hope of summer
rests in the gently rolling hills,
the golden sheaves of garnered corn
and the lushness of the blackberries
in the hedgerows.
With solemn seriousness
Nature sighs
and as the evening cools
the silence of the scene
is pierced occasionally
by God’s evening hymn.

 

Morning Glory

‘Sunrise’ … Watercolour – WHB – 2014

Let me go
Let me run in the early dew
To brush against the laurel’s leaves
Tread the cool earth’s cushion
And linger in the dampness of the silent wood.

Before the cooing of the collared bird,
The bite of the new day’s busy-ness,
Its threats and promises,
Breaks into the stillness of my morning world
And ruptures this mood of mystery
Of thrill and almost menace,
Leaving me to face another day of reality
One more acceptance of the wrenching truth.