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- Written by: Sheila Barksdale
A pleasant day for both science and history sleuthing and although it’s a summer day, it’s an English summer day. Enough heat to anchor a few butterflies but not enough to stir the notably ugly insects who make a daytime dormer of flower baskets. The hanging flower baskets attached to the old museum building are thoughtfully placed high enough to not be a head-bumping hazard which is a mark of intelligence on the part of the museum staff who are helpfully informative about local history. This ancient Abbey town of Winchcombe recently attracted a blaze of publicity when top scientists tracked a meteorite arriving to land in the driveway of a modest house on the edge of town. I’ve come here curious to find the very spot where it landed and I do easily locate the small dent in the driveway. I consider kneeling there like a true pilgrim for a selfie but then remember that the much-heralded voyager is now in fact lending its curious corpus to a shelf in a London museum I am usually commendably germ-phobic about possible nasty viruses borne from outer space but today my intrepid spirit abandons all caution. In the absence of the actual fragment of meteorite, I substitute a nearby voyaging snail in order to add drama to my selfie pose. With no squeamishness at all, I place in it on my brow and lie down on the tarmac, reminding myself that snail gunk is a miracle booster for re-vitalising human skin. Despite the unnerving lack of hand-washing facilities to deal with any residual cosmic dust, I find myself able to shrug off any foreboding thoughts of alarming diseases.
Cosmic dust or merely common street dust, I shake it off my heels and stride out of town to my next encounter with a puzzling Time capsule: a challenging trek up to a lonely escarpment will take me to a Stone Age burial site called Belas Knap Long Barrow. I have read the tourist guidebook (held aloft like Florence Nightingale’s lamp, all the better to use as a flyswat) and know to expect only a grassy mound. So I’m not surprised when I arrive at the barrow and there’s nothing thrilling to see. I do, however, feel it my scientific duty to tarry atop the turfy tump to monitor the local legend about Spirit Sensitive visitors: Spirit Sensitives, such as myself, are said to get a creepy feeling of Being Watched when venturing alone to Belas Knap. But today, despite my authentic openness towards Time Travelers, I can really only attribute any dodgy light-headedness to the stiff gradient of the hill. Or slight panic that I have too long lingered and thunder clouds have hove into view and I may get caught in a summer storm. Struck by lightning. Or catch pneumonia after a drenching from the welkin’s o’erbrimming chalice.
So many hazards on this type of expedition! I summon a suitably stout heart and matching legs and start wending my way back to town via lush-pastured fields which hide the isolated hamlet of Charlton Abbots. Here, in medieval times, the Abbey monks of Winchcombe built a summer outpost dedicated to caring for the sick. Nothing remains of it now, not even a wall to give relief of shade to a couple of restless horses whose fly-masks are obviously uncomfortable in the way a plague doctor’s beaky mask was uncomfortable. The splendid bucolic creatures do have obstructed vision due to their face masks but I feel it’s their native boldness and not trifling hunger which causes them to nibble persistently at my guidebook. The footpath is overgrown anyway, so I trust to chance, following a hoppity crow down to a stream, hoping in my heart he does not have the newly-arrived bird flu. The stream is clear-running but there is a sadly stagnant pool beside a small debris-draped weir. I pause to wonder if it was the Friday-fasting, fish-eating monks who constructed the weir. No doubt the bright green swathes of watercress came in handy as a healing herb or just enjoyed as cream of watercress soup ( a recipe from olden times with their risky reliance on unpasteurised dairy products).
The crow is agitated, keeps hopping around the pool, not dipping his beak in for a drink but watching me in a sombre way. Then with a menacing loud caw he takes to the air, franticly rocketing about until finally diving between the two horses who were ambling down to join me. The sudden strike on the ground of cantering hooves gives a jolt to my memory. For now I recall the conversation I had with a local historian when covid was closing in on us: she had the distinctive name of Anne Crow: yes, now I remember
Its old name
of Lepers Pool:
abundant watercress
shivers
- Details
- Written by: Erica Dionora
Leaving the station, I enter a life-sized pinball machine, its nooks leading to colorful storefronts and the market stands jutting out of sidewalks. Sounds of traffic, passing conversations, and youthful street musicians with their teenage fanbase ornament the streets. I am moved from one great possibility to another, and I bounce from a fresh fruit juice cart to an egg waffle stand, then to a mart selling keychains and plush toys. My pace is determined by the crowd's movement that seems to carve the district’s pathways as a stream carves a flowing river into the land.
crowded crosswalks
mother and child part
at the green light
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- Written by: Joshua St. Claire
Olivier, you sure know how to prioritize. It all starts with two sides of a different coin. Most people just start by counting the seven parts. People often don’t realize that there are precisely two options and also an uncountable multitude of others. The poet must also count to four (or the local equivalent of four which ranges from two to six). The square root of the negative one is also classically included, but may be subsumed into the other birds. Frankly, I don’t know the birds, either, Olivier, but I can look them up in a book of images. There is an importance of using only pages of this book, but the poet can make up his own book and take pages from that. To borrow a page from your book, let’s both get on the same page. Of course, the true and only key to using the book to decipher what this really means is the je ne sais quoi of après moi, le déluge.
a broken lark
cupped in my hands
the Pleiades
Editor’s note: Sept haïkaï — esquisses japonaises (Seven Haiku: Japanese Sketches) and it is a composition for piano by Olivier Messiaen. The set of Sept haïkaï was composed by Messiaen in 1962. The work is composed of seven movements. The seven haiku are arranged symmetrically: I and VII constitute the introduction and coda (conclusion) respectively, II, III, V and VI represent sound pictures of places (Nara Park, Yamanaka, Miyajima and Karuizawa) of Japan Messiaen had visited. The central movement ,IV th movement, represents the sounds of Indian rhythms, Gagaku, the music of the Noh theatre. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sept_haikai
je ne sais quoi of après moi, le deluge in French means ‘I do not know what happens after one is gone.’
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- Written by: Nalini Shetty
The house holds its breath, every shadow deeper than memory. I tread lightly, the floorboards giving voice to silence. Each creak, a reminder that something lingers—unseen.
midnight chill—
the curtain sways
without wind
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- Written by: Alfred Booth
Under a shadowy sunlight, I'm reading Anne Radge in French, the second volume of her "Neshov" series. This morning, the downhill park close to my apartment shows its first scattering of color which will eventually fade into mulch. Crows caw as they take wing, a possible protest to the Sunday morning passers-by. Daylight savings made its mark on circadian rhythms last night. My reading still distracted, a group of twenty or so retirement-age tourists unpack their early lunches and squeeze themselves onto the eight benches close to my favorite one a few meters away. This is where a stately ginkgo's stump has pushed out new branches. I don't know why it was felled, but I'm glad the stump has flourished this year. My bench has new orange graffiti that resembles ascemic writing. I see it as a Fauré-like hymn to the recent full moon. I plunge back into my book, tourist chatter now white noise. On my return home I will have my food when the clock's normal chime invites me. My pantry shelves have a few remaining offerings to tantalize my tastebuds. I must also remember to buy heather for the window sills at the open-air market early tomorrow morning before the crowds make the aisles difficult to navigate.
a Bach fugue
untangles my mind . . .
early sunset
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- Written by: Richard L. Matta
I rescript the setting. Imagine a big basket cabled to my A-frame house, as if it had been tented for termites, the tent now a hot air balloon. I flame the propane, ascend before the stampeding hillside flames bring their horrific hisses, crackles and heat. I drift to a safe place, all those life collections are intact, as helicopters swoop like giant dragons, spew their red and yellow dousing powders, color the acrid hills and snapping trees.
healing garden
a measure of aloe
for my mind
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- Written by: C.X. Turner
cooling tea
I tuck her blanket
into the stars
A few reminders, my love:
- Don’t waste time worrying about the cost of the utility bills. Use what you need to, I’ve set up direct debits for everything.
- Wash the bedsheets once a week and hang them outside on the line in fair weather so that you bring a little of the outside into our home.
- Trim the topiary bird with kitchen scissors. Do this every few weeks in the summer months, less so in winter, otherwise it will lose its shape.
- Wear your knitted scarf and hat when going outside in the cold so you don’t catch a chill.
- Choose slippers that fit your feet.
- Follow the advice of health professionals and your children.
- Always get up every day before 9 am and wash your face and brush your teeth and put on a clean shirt.
- Any cleaning product in the bathroom with a duck on is to go in the toilet, but protect your clothes from any splashes, my love, or they will stain.
- Keep yourself busy but remember to rest.
- Be sad once in a while but not all the time.
I’m right here with you, my dear. One day at a time.
first winter
taking small steps
in the shadows
- Details
- Written by: Réka Nyitrai and Alan Peat
Can you imagine, for over a century my beard has been lost; quite forgotten in the Antarctic woodlands - says God to the journalists gathered around him. And who was the one who found your beard? - inquires one of the thronging flock of reporters.
A tree creeper found it by accident…on the top of a tree on an iceberg – says God. I was sleeping here in New York when I felt someone tug on my beard. They were pulling so hard that I fell off the bed.
This is the news I heard this morning on Radio Yerevan. It is my favorite radio station. On Mondays, it broadcasts news from heaven. On Fridays: from hell.
surfing
through static
a voice in the waves
Authors Note: Ekphrastic haibun is based on a watercolour of a dead tree creeper found in a Cape Adare hut in the Antarctic and attributed to Dr. Edward Adrain Wilson (a member of Robert Falcon Scott’s 1911 expedition).
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- Written by: Julia Vaughan
I need new glasses. My cataracts have grown, a little. Life is blurred in patches. At SpecSavers, I whittle down to two choices; a grey and silver, elegant, delicate pair, and their limited edition, Fred Hollows range, donating profits from them to the Foundation. (I love that.) This time, Australian Aboriginal artist, Helen Dale Samson did a magnificent painting, Puntawarri, from which SpecSavers took their spectacular design.
Loud, bright colours. Swirls, dots, dashes. Circles and more dots. Like a crazy, mesmerizing kaleidoscope. Random people stop me in the street, to say they love my glasses.
Cataracts
Choose new specs
Eclectus
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- Written by: Biswajit Mishra
I wake up in a non-somnambulistic state and warm myself with a perfect cup of tea brewed without footprints. I no longer live in the house my great-grandparents built because I have heard they didn’t have enough doors and had more locks. Their windows weren’t even big enough for bird calls. I have seen their great pictures of sunrises on the wall, sunsets were grander in their photographs. We can’t imagine how that would have been to live with. I am told that I have risen from ashes, so I stopped burning having burned again and again. I fly through every world without casting a shadow.
hopscotch
missing some
touching some
- Details
- Written by: Diana Webb
Why should I make excuses? Why should I justify my style to the critics? I'm playing what I feel, see, hear in the moment. Playing what I almost touch in the moment. You beside me, Ever beside me. That is my truth whether it's Mozart. Satie. Debussy. Each note at my fingertips drips with the same. Drips with a certain synaesthesia.
'jardins sous la pluie'
so many portraits merge
in a single tear
Author’s Note: ekphrasis from The Concert by Vermeer with title from Shakespeare Sonnet 113
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- Written by: Rafał Zabratyński
After the Big Bang, all photons were trapped in a hot and thick soup of matter. The universe was opaque to light but then it expanded rapidly and cooled enough to allow electrons to bond with protons. As a result, the first neutral atoms of hydrogen were formed, at the same time releasing light and turning the universe transparent.
sleepless night
switching the light on
and off
Presumably, the evaporation of the last black hole in the universe will cause the last flash of light, most likely unnoticeable to anyone or anything. The expansion of the universe will eventually lead to photonic cooling, approaching absolute zero and rendering time to become meaningless at the Big Freeze.
farewell message
the last full stop
triggers memories
Perhaps a collision of our dying universe with a parallel one may ignite another Big Bang, creating a baby universe and opening a brave new volume of photon tales.
harvest moon
a pear snack boots up
the belly kicking
- Details
- Written by: Jenny Fraser
Autumn whispers
furrows till the silence
Time
to uncoil a basket of muka
thread with air
Riff close to the sun
Drift featherweight
on river clouds
be shredded
by wind
dawn’s
bright notes spill . . .
piwakawaka
*muka - flax fibre
*piwakawaka - fantail, a native New Zealand bird
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- Written by: Srini
It is a still afternoon. My nephew says it looks like the map of India, pointing to a white cloud. And that one looks like the map of Nepal. I join him in the naming game and point to the maps of countries, near and far, floating in the blue sky. Soon a steady wind blows the clouds away. We have some errands to run…
the lightness of being wildflowers
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- Written by: Manasa Reddy Chichili
I try to sleep, but I cannot.
I remember everything tonight:
Mom's lullaby, Grandmother’s old stories
The beautiful moonlight …
Now, in my dusk of life
I wish to shine
As bright as a star in the sky again.
winter moonlight
glitter dew drops
on a shaded window
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- Written by: Milan Rajkumar
Battle of Imphal –
written on a soldier's grave
'Known Unto God'
Once again, I flip through the worn-out pages of the big volume of WWII. It's not the strategies or forces of the Allied and Axis powers that intrigue me, but rather the aftermath and human conditions. Leaving behind their families and loved ones, the soldiers came in droves and made the soil red.
archive photos—
forgotten tales fading
in monochrome
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- Written by: Sandip Chauhan
In my dream, I walk through the azure days of my childhood. The gentle breeze carries the sweet fragrance of jasmine petals, mingling with the scent of blooming gulmohar trees. Days when weddings were arranged, and old copper pots and gleaming silver spoons bore new names. The gentle sound of mom's hands rolling out rotis fills the kitchen, as I watch them rise in the warmth of the hearth.
autumn dusk
stars settle gently
in open palms
Having crossed many oceans, the homeland I left behind is a soft echo—its presence lingering in my heart. Suspended between two worlds—past and present—I feel the lingering taste of pomegranates, a gentle brush of that distant home.
gentle whispers
the ocean’s pull
in a quiet room
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- Written by: Lavana Kray
Day after day, after day, after day, until one day...
And then, not even a day goes by and someone
(someone else) comes to clean up the place...
Few garbage bags: our memories.
rustling shadows –
an origami crane
through the shredder
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- Written by: Joanna Delalande (prose) & Oscar Luparia (haiku)
Here where I live, it seldom snows. Sometimes tiny flakes fall from the sky unexpectedly, only to disappear just as quickly, leaving no trace. Just an old photo I saw this morning was enough to make the memory of a real winter come alive. This view recalled snowy stretches shimmering gently in the January sun, footprints left by the crows, and the silence that accompanies the infinite whiteness, the moments I long for . . .
It was a time of long walks and small joys. Also today, I celebrate this ritual from the past, I lightly follow a familiar path, feeling a hint of spring. It is like a different land of small vegetable patches covered at present with the remains of last year's harvest, fruit trees, and a pergola where vines grow whenever the weather is mild. And a pond with redfish. Nature is never in a hurry. Even the raindrops slowly fall from the last leaves. Here and now: the moment I am living.
still winter
a lonely chirping
colors the day
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- Written by: Chen-ou Liu
The verdict blasts from the wall-mounted TV. The diners, mostly white, freeze, and the silence falls over the room. Suddenly, clapping, cheering, and yelling from waiters and the kitchen staff.
frosty window
in gathering dusk I stare
into my reflection
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- Written by: Lakshmi Iyer
The open summer drawing class starts in summer vacation. This time, Grandpa accompanies me despite his fragile and weak body. I carry cotton balls for the clouds; blue, white, black, and brown tube colours, one thin and one thick brush, a palette, and water. I am all set to have my maiden strokes with my first painting brush under the banyan tree.
mackerel sky
the crunch
of the forest fire
I stick the cotton on the passing clouds and a little brown on the fallen tree, mix a little black to strengthen the branches’ crust. The uprooted roots catch my attention as the brown and black colours get smudged.
My eyes meet Grandpa's as he waves his hands to carry on.
geriatric window
a tender creeper hooks
on a rose plant
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- Written by: Subir Ningthouja
Tomorrow, both of us will enter the monastic life. We have given off all our worldly belongings. After our simple supper, we sit together on the balcony. I have trained my mind long and hard. I remember our laughter at the little harvests from our kitchen garden. We promise to retain the smiles on our faces despite the frenzied nursing of our illnesses.
revolving door ...
momentary glances
hold a lifetime
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- Written by: Lorraine Haig
Beneath our feet, the dense and springy moss creeps to the lake’s edge. Our warm coats repel the chill while we watch the sunset cast pink and mauve over the ranges, deepening shadows to violet. The peaks fall into blackness. In the press of night, the lake gathers up the cold. Against the dimming sky, cockatoos screech as they fly to their roosts. A wombat waddles into view and pademelons emerge to start their nightly forage.
We retreat indoors to a glass of red and an open fire.
Huon pine
housing two thousand years
of growth rings
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- Written by: Anthony Lusardi
ancient orb of space. your light has finally reached earth. as i sit in my backyard. adding wood to a firepit. swigging a stella. and wondering . . . are you now long gone from this universe? what planets and solar systems have you seen? and do they still witness your glow?between the specks of venus and mars. the summer twilight fades. your light remains bright. and my thoughts drift . . . if we could ascend further into space. should we care about the dangers?the journeys we make are never ending. time is relevant. and whether on earth. or beyond the stars. we must make the most. of what arrives now.
fire embers
up into the night
the way fireflies
- Details
- Written by: Robert Witmer
I listened with impatience to a language I couldn’t understand. They ate food I didn’t like, and things smelled funny. I preferred to stay home and watch TV, but my parents made me go. I suppose that now the farm is a housing development, similar to where I grew up. Over time, everything became more and more like me – and, slowly but surely, I wished it were different.
first snow
a little boy uncovers
the last strawberry
- Details
- Written by: John Zheng
(Ekphrastic Haibun after Eudora Welty's Wildflowers)
Two girls pose side by side by the road,
one smiling shyly with a bundle
of wildflowers in her arms,
the other showing a faraway look.
Standing before the framed photograph,
two old women, each holding
a cane in their gnarled hands,
chat excitedly about the girls.
One says, “They are my classmates.
The smiling girl is Daisy.
I don’t remember the other one.”
Another adds thoughtfully,
“She looks like a hollyhock bud.”
Both laugh and walk to the next frame.
spring break
the antique wall clock
rewinds old-time music
- Details
- Written by: Pamela Garry
When the paramedic had finished his shift during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, he saw the broken sparrow on top of a parked ambulance. He heeded yet another call and brought the bird home.
The bird gradually convalesced with gentle care from the whole family. When she could spread her wings for balance, she went outdoors and eventually joined a flock.
Quite often, the bird returns, drinks water from the familiar birdbath and tweets with family back and forth.
a seedless hull
on a cloud
in a puddle
- Details
- Written by: Don Baird
staggering through the plethora of toxic thoughts stirring pilled-cocktails heartless shrews bend ears for pennies found in rattling pockets filled with spent dreams swallowed by deep lure where lust remains sleepless in profits drowned by sink scum shaking hands with the underworld of stained memories
new storms slush funds twist lies truth lies