Tag / haibun

by Carol J Forrester

Autumn Burns Bright – #DVersePoetsPub

It feels as if we are introducing you to Autumn. Slowly, and with care. Small hands, fingers fisted before bursting open like early fireworks. Breath-taking. Quite literally. Little face, big eyes, shadows for brows. All of these things change as the season steps in, lifts you from your bassinet, pinks your cheeks.

Look– at how much you’ve grown, at how the leaves have turned so quickly, these layers forming one over the other. Breath, and breeze, across your vocal chords. Outside a storm is cooing through the branches, changing notes, the strength of it lifting tree roots from their standings. When the winds settle, we sweep all the chaos beneath carpets, smooth the lines till they’re crisp. Pat you stomach. Tell you, that this fire is good.

The sky is beaten grey,
the metallic sheen of swords
unsheathed and waiting.

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by Carol J Forrester

The Year After Last – A Poem By Carol J Forrester #DVersePoets

Squirming at the pumpkin guts, your hands scooped into ladles, spooning palmfuls of seed and sludge. We took desert spoons to the wisp remains. Raked the slick walls smooth. Marked out the features with sharpies, a wide outline mouth, hollow eyes, skeleton nose. Sawed kitchen knives through thick sick, fingers squeaking tight on the handles.

This year, that kitchen is someone else’s, and the plants have not spat out anything other than flowers, their yellow blooms autumn mulched into the borders. There is no spilling through the doorway, hat and coats rain kissed into my open arms. No mud footprints on the tiles. Only seeds, sat on the shelf, kept dark and safe, for more hospitable times. My own roots deepening, on the promises pushed away till Spring.

Evening has a weight,
a sense of things settling down,
comfort in closing.

by Carol J Forrester

From Her Side Of Things #DVersePoets #MondayHaibun

Someone comments that she’d never really worked. Not a proper job. Not a nine-to-five, sit down at a desk, shuffle the papers, count the numbers, find the words sort of job. She just ‘helped’ her parents in their shop, then ‘helped’ her husband.

At Christmas my mother, her daughter, takes the carving knife. Skills become ingrained when you park a pram in the backroom of a butcher’s. They get passed down on generation to the next. Not always perfect, but present like the bark and callous of their hands when they take mine. Evidence of everything they’ve given.

She says she never really worked a proper job, not a nine-to-five, like I have. Passes me the cutter for scones that won’t be as good as her mother’s, because she hasn’t got the knack like she had. She was only ever ‘helping’ not working, not like her daughter does, not like I do. She was only ever there in the background.

Autumn is not Spring,

but beauty still grows in her

and there is worth there.

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by Carol J Forrester

Out In The Garden – #DVersePoets #MondayHaibun

The peas have podded. I’m not sure if it’s the snap, or your bog standard, good old trusty garden type, but they’ve podded first with the white petals of the flowers still stuck to the green of their shells.

Inside the crop is still too small, too young. I checked today. Popped my nail into the seam, slit through the flesh, cracked it open. New growth, old book. They both sound the same.

They are not ready for harvest, but when you bite down they explode. They taste like spring, or summer, or something else that’s hot days and sudden rain storms. They tasted like they should do. New and fresh.

It’s been a wet one,

this spring, this downpour of water

thickening the green.

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by Carol J Forrester

March Madness #DVersePoets #HaibunMonday

My sister and I are taking about family and afterwards I write about Wonderland. The way in which it frightened me as a child when Alice falls, and fall, and falls, and falls, and all the while the world is whirling upwards, downwards, outwards in patterns whorled inside each other like carnivorous flowers, too consumed with consuming each other to notice she is screaming.

Someone asks me if I’m mad, without asking that specifically, because you know, that would be unkind. I tell her I’m not delusional. Reassure her, don’t mention again the shadows I keep seeing out of the corners of my eyes, my white rabbits flitting out of sight each time I turn. Put it down to an over active imagination. Tell myself the same.

Spring plays peek-a-boo,

the white rabbit’s ears twitch twice,

I am clinging on.

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