“On the Spot” haiku

I haven’t published any poems for some time, so I thought I’d share the following for #WorldPoetryDay.

These were written at the “Creativity with the Spirit” evening (13 Nov 2017) during Scottish Interfaith Week. They don’t follow a traditional Japanese 5-7-5 syllable structure (this departure is apparently quite common nowadays). “On the Spot”, as all six were written in the course of about 20 minutes, with no further editing.

flakes in the air
first snowfall
or volcanic eruption

mist in the air
forgot the brolly
up goes the hood

autumn morn
the Clyde like glass
leaf falling on water

springtime here
still bundled up
where are the blooms?

Saturday morn
lie-in expected
binmen disrupt

Shabbat morn on the bus
yet on the streets
life goes on

Glasgow, 21 March 2018

Eff-in’ snow

Snowman on frozen Lake Saimaa, Puumala, Finland
Photo by Petritap

Forecast:

Fleeting first flurries flawlessly flying
flakes flitting farther
feebly falling to fjord and flat fields
fading…

Friends fabricate a favorite:
fat, festive, fairyland figure “Frosty”
festooned with fashionable fingers
frippery from firs, foraged from forest floor.

Fabulous!? ‘fraid not
Frosty’s frail, fears flames
Fate: to fizzle,
from frozen to floe to flood
Phooey!

After a fortnight, further flakes
Unfazed,
frisky fellows fervently form Frosty afresh!
Folly?

Fret not!
Finale, a fitting (formidable) aphorism:
“Forbearance fundamental:
frequent are ephemeral phenomena.”

from the Firth of Lime, foreign Aalborg