A Series of haiku around birds and birdlife
sunflower heart
the chiffchaff sings
its name
Alan Summers
tinywords 13.2 2013
(ISSN 2157-5010)
eJournal/eMagazine San Mateo, CA : D.F. Tweney : El Camino
Press
Chiffchaff
song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_C2Z9PWEaM
http://www.bto.org/about-birds/bird-id/willow-warbler-chiffchaff
Chiffchaff/Common Chiffchaff:
http://www.garden-birds.co.uk/birds/chiffchaff.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Chiffchaff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Chiffchaff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_C2Z9PWEaM
http://www.bto.org/about-birds/bird-id/willow-warbler-chiffchaff
Chiffchaff/Common Chiffchaff:
http://www.garden-birds.co.uk/birds/chiffchaff.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Chiffchaff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Chiffchaff
roll of the apple…
I decide to let birdsong
back out of the box
Alan Summers
Under the Basho Vol 1.1 Autumn 2013
an up-too-late moon
the blackbird whispers its
song
as I stumble home
Alan Summers
Yamadera Basho Memorial Museum (Japan 2013)
this small ache and all the
rain too robinsong
Alan Summers
Publications credits: Modern Haiku vol. 44.1 winter/spring
2013
cool morning
birdsong
light on a distant cloud
Alan Summers
Publications credits: Modern Haiku, (1999); Azami Haiku in
English Commemorative Issue (Japan
2000); Birmingham Words Magazine Issue 3 (Autumn 2004); Birdsong - a haiku
sequence Together They Stood,
Poetry Now (2004); Haiku Friends Vol. 3 ed. Masaharu Hirata (Japan 2009)
down side streets -
gulls turning the sky
in and out
Alan Summers
Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years. Ed. Jim Kacian,
Allan Burns & Philip Rowland (W. W. Norton & Company 2013) http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?ID=4294972241; The
Disjunctive Dragonfly, a New Approach to English-Language Haiku by Richard
Gilbert (Red Moon Press 2012) [Elemental Animsim p80] http://www.redmoonpress.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=32&products_id=179
cumulus clouds
a clattering of jackdaws
rearrange their pattern
Alan Summers
Publications credits: Blithe Spirit vol. 20 no. 3 (2010)
note:
An archaic collective noun for a
group of Jackdaws is a "clattering."
First recorded in John Lydgate's Debate
between the Horse, Goose and Sheep, c.1430, as "A clatering of
chowhis", and then in Juliana Berners Book of St. Albans,
c.1480, as "a Clateryng of choughes."
A "clattering" of Jackdaws:
Other names for Jackdaws include caddesse, cawdaw, caddy,
chauk, college-bird (from dialectal college "cathedral"), jackerdaw,
jacko, ka-wattie, chimney-sweep bird, from their nesting propensities, and
sea-crow, from their frequenting coasts. ..or just plain "Jack"
talkwildlife.com: http://www.talkwildlife.com/photo/a-clattering-of-jackdaws
four rosellas distant sounds
to blue
Alan Summers
Publications credits: Azami #34 (Japan 1996)
through an open window
a kookaburra laugh
enters
Alan Summers
Publications credits: Frogpond (Haiku Society of America
journal, Summer 1994); Scope Feature (FAWQ, Australia, 1994); Micropress
magazine; Micropress: best poems Ed. Kate O'Neill, Micropress NZ (1997;
Moonlighting; sundog haiku journal: an australian year (sunfast press 1997 reprinted 1998); California State Library - Main
Catalog Call Number : HAIKU S852su 1997
Kookaburra calls:
Seven Sisters the call of
owls either side
Alan Summers
Publications credits: Blithe Spirit (British Haiku Society
journal, March 2012)
train whistle
a blackbird hops
along its notes
a blackbird hops
along its notes
Alan Summers
Publications credits:
Presence #47 (2012): The Haiku Foundation Per Diem
(September 2012): The Elements
V to U
a parliament of rooks
shift their flight
Alan Summers
Publications credits: Icebox, Hailstone Haiku Group, Japan
(2010)
Selected by Hisashi Miyazaki
fading last note
torresian crow sounds
the darkening sky
Alan Summers
Publications credits: Paper Wasp (Australia 1997); Azami
(Japan 1998); Blithe Spirit, (June 2004); Shamrock Haiku Journal, Irish Haiku
Society, Spring 2006; Sketchbook, A Journal for Eastern & Western Short Forms Nov. 2007; Haiku Hike;
THFhaiku app for iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch (2011)
Torresian Crow: http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/speciesfactsheet.php?id=5786
the names of rain
a blackbird’s subsong
into dusk
Publications credits:
Haiku News Vol. 1 No. 35 (September 2012); featured poet at Cornell University
USA (Cornell University, Mann Library haiku showcase March 2013.)
haiku news: http://www.wayfarergallery.net/haikunews/?p=4018
subsong soundtrack: http://tinyurl.com/blackbirdsubsong
Alan Summers, a Japan Times award-winning writer, regularly runs online classes and workshops on haiku, and related genres such as tanka, haibun, and tanka prose. For further information, please don't hestitate to contact Call of the Page Course Director Karen Hoy, who will only be too delighted to send you information about these intriguing short verse poetry genres.
Karen's email: admin@callofthepage.org
.