Autumn Haiku 31

month of October
one haiku every day
thank you, and goodnight.

Autumn Haiku 30

the warmth commandment:
pajamas, woollen blankets
thou shalt not duvet

Autumn Haiku 29

in America
they speak with optimism
mouths full of junk food

Autumn Haiku 28

the season ending
regulation is normal
dissent is a must

Autumn Haiku 27

blogging from Boston
New England in the fall, a
tea-foating harbor

Autumn Haiku 26

The United States,
home of the brave and the free;
still quite expensive.

Autumn Haiku 25

two before seven
the October date, that is
podcast, once again!

Autumn Haiku 24

we left them too late
thoughts of this year's holiday
remote Swedish beach

Autumn Haiku 23

reminiscences
projections and fantasies
nowhere in the now

Autumn Haiku 22

you snog like a tart
mouth wide open, tongue hung out
shame you're just a dog...

Autumn Haiku 21

from tiny acorns
mighty oak trees grow.. an old
autumnal cliché!

Autumn Haiku 20

remember: my mum
got it all horribly wrong
when she said "i do"

Autumn Haiku 19

an old friend once lost
to me is returned once more
Autumn into Spring

Autumn Haiku 18

walking Hampstead Heath
the distant city sirens
are rarely silent

Autumn Haiku 17

bloody aftermath
hunting their own people as
the world looks elsewhere

Autumn Haiku 16

sit still, do nothing
what better way to start a
miserable day?

Autumn Haiku 15

my insomnia
keeping me awake again
hello, internet..

Autumn Haiku 14

this stone has a face
it says to me, "get outside
while the weather's good!"

Autumn Haiku 13

an electric bike
the transport of future kings
economical

Autumn Haiku 12

we took the train to
Ramsgate, celebrating Eid
walked along the beach

Autumn Haiku 11

what a lot of fun
writing haiku ev’ry day
while i blog elsewhere

Autumn Haiku 10

i lost my gold fish
part of me for nineteen years
end of an era

Autumn Haiku 9

a rich pretty boy
pretending to give a shit :
David Cameron

Autumn Haiku 8

blood-spattered pavement
chav girl said I was a freak
for photographing

Autumn Haiku 7

running round the park
fitness, a modern virtue
Sunday morning sex

Autumn Haiku 6

podcast twenty six
sixty minutes of music
how predictable..

Autumn Haiku 5

five thirty a.m.
can't stop sneezing - allergy?
bollocks, it's a cold... !

Autumn Haiku 4

more pornography
the monks in Burma running
China buys their gas..

Autumn Haiku 3

porridge for breakfast
a stomach full of warm oats
seventeen spoonfuls!

Autumn Haiku 2

one forty each text
message, characters challenge
haiku, an art form

Autumn Haiku 1

a leaf falls, golden
summer sun coats cold ground, it
makes its own way down

Mabon: The Beginning Of Everything

It's that wonderful time once more, the Autumn Equinox, another Pagan holy day stolen by the Christians and turned into Harvest Festival. Mabon was the son of Mordon, the Goddess of the earth, the Pagan festival celebrates his birth; and of course, this is John Keats' season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Day and night are of equal measure. Here in the north, it's getting dark at 8pm and there is a freshness to the mornings, even though the afternoons can still turn your skin brown.

I love this sketch of Keats; it gives him a romantic intensity and reminds me of his awful tubercular death.

The coming of Autumn always brings out in me a deeply introspective side, the balance to the energy which we experience as we anticipate winter and all our rural collective memories tell us to fix the roof and fill the cellar with turnips, apples and potatoes. I still possess notebooks full of whimsy, produced by the season which all romantics love the most, because, as Patrick Keiller pointed out to me, it is the beginning of everything.

John Keats - To Autumn

I

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.


II

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

III

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.