All works © Magdalen Jago 2008. All rights reserved.
Haiku (I) Last Watch
Last watch, fireless.
Mist coats the down of my cheek.
The rock cools ‘neath me.
Straining ears to hear,
no sounds midst fogbound firboughs.
Even peepers sleep.
No whirr, chirp, rustle.
I hunch upon fog-chilled rock
as shadows deepen.
Haiku (II) In the Land of the Reindeer
Velvet lips, her breath
warming frost encrusted rocks
releases snowdrops.
Haiku (III) Kingdom Insecta
His eye on the crown,
the ant storms the gnarled tree root’s
mossy parapet,
-while-
A beetle trundles
‘cross twig bridges from leafy
isle to leafy isle,
-and-
The waterstriders
ride the currents ‘round pebble
archipelagos.
Haiku (IV)
Mist drips drops, rain rains.
Laid in a dryer season,
the footpath is gone.
Haiku (V)
Storm air shimmering,
strings of cloud beads, lightning torn,
sink toward pools of sky.
Haiku (VI)
Dead, dried up bits of
Himalayan shrubbery
revived and steaming,
the first sip scalds lips
and throat; the last leaves on the
tongue a bitterness.
Patterned dregs remain,
a tea leaf mosaic. Time
for another cup.
Haiku (VII) Fox
Frail twigs bound with hay
cup the blindly peeping chicks
as wind tossed boughs flail.
One dainty black paw
extended, bright eyed red fox
pins a fallen chick.
Wing beats knife the air,
blur his sight, deafen his ears,
Snap! Snap! His jaws close…
On the empty air.
Haiku (VIII)
Spring’s first dusk, I heard
In foggy fields breft of
Snow, spring peepers sing.
Haiku (IX)
Towering cloudward,
lichen-bearded pines, grasping
root-cracked rock, dig deep.
Haiku (X) Over Texas
30,000 feet
below, cloud shadows lie pinned
by shafts of sunlight.
Fern-like arroyos,
brown frond, spread feathered fingers
over dusty plains.
Haiku (XI)
The silk of her sleeve,
as she lays aside her brush,
falls about her wrist.
Haiku (XII)
Asleep, he nods once.
His book, cradled in his arm,
forgotten, falls closed.
All works © Magdalen Jago 2008. All rights reserved.
