Winter Hudson

Long things beach here:
concrete pylons, railroad ties,
styrofoam swim noodles.

What is a “styrofoam swim noodle”? Here’s a picture: http://www.amazon.com/Water-Log-Swimming-Pool-Noodles/dp/B002H3E8N8/ref=pd_sbs_sg_3

from Kamome

Two haiku and a photo, just received from Kamome:

After the great thaw,

Odour of leafmould suspires

From the grass verges.

Kamome writes: I cannot find ‘suspire’ in any online dictionary; I learnt it from Fitzgerald’s quatrain in The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: ‘Now the New Year reviving Old Desires,/The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires./Where the White Hand of Moses on the Bough/Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires.’ There is definitely a New Year association, of the rebirth of the seasons, and of life still breathing in us.

New Year’s ladybird

Appears on my armchair drape –

‘Home is where you are.’

A Jack Frost threesome

Spiralling seagulls:
This frozen-footed pigeon
Pauses to admire

Early morning breath
Dissolving like a dream:
White heron swooping

First frost:
Past brooding cormorants
Seagulls head upstream

1/1/2010

New Year’s. The clouds
slide apart just long enough
for a kiss: full moon.

Javanese Mountain Morning

The grasscutters’ trail –

Birds relate the way of it

Through memory of cinnamon.

……………………………………………………………… (Kaliadam, Mt. Merapi, Java, 2.1.10)

On the Banks of the Kamogawa

A new dawn:
Seagulls, and sunshine sparkles
Children flying kites

From Hawai’i & Shikoku

At dawn in Waikiki:

Pale water pooled –
To the lattice manhole lid
The bill of a dove

蒼き水マンホールのくぼみに鳩漱ぐ
.
The debut of a new period drama series, “Ryoma”, reminded me of how in 2008 I had driven alone to search for a secret road crossing the Shikoku mountains, through which Sakamoto Ryoma had fled from the Tosa domain:

Repaired stone wall
Of the escape road from the fief,
Already mossy

脱藩の道整えし石垣既に苔生す