Haiku Bob Rd 4: last of the snow

It’s fair to say I’m a little confused.

Not (just) because I’m on the other side of the world while my beloved Pies enjoy their most purple of purple of patches in living memory!

As a haiku poet, I’m a captive of nature and the cycle of the seasons.

It’s as it should be.

Part of the enjoyment of ‘world haiku’ is in the sharing of experiences of the different regions and hemispheres of the planet – reading about a blizzard in New York while lying in the scorching sun on the Sunshine Coast, for example. Here in Sweden, we have just reached the end of the longest winter (well, for me anyway). Spring is exploding all around us. The landscape is singing. It’s exhilarating. It’s all I write about – again, as a haiku poet, as it should be. In the moment.

But once a week, I download my other world. Like a voyeur, I tune into the sights and sounds of a culture that still commands most of my natural instincts, but that I am seperated from. Football culture. It’s physical, oral, aural, and religious. It lives in you wherever you are, if you let it. And gives no quarter! Football is also a seasonal game. Part of life’s cyclical nature. And footy haiku has purposely been based concretely in the here and now.

This won’t change, despite my move to the north. But the seasonal cues will.

It will seem odd to most of you as you read through the following haiku and try to relive the game (one of the aims of footy haiku) with the out of synch seasonal references.

I’m not sure what I can do about that, other than move about 12,000 miles to the left. Hopefully it is not an unfavourable distraction.

I wasn’t sure if I would keep up the footy haiku after moving to Sweden. Fortunately, I am finding the time. But I am still settling into the new surrounds.

Let’s see how it rolls.

HB.




end of the week

unwinding a bit more

with each goal






Pies’ hot start –

the last of the snow

melts






sultry night Swan slips another tackle






slow connection speed –

Daisy’s run up the ‘G

a blur






live feed breaks up –

another pass

misses its mark






leaves start to appear –

Cloke outreaches

the pack






the first crocus

reach for the sky –

Daisy’s leap