Difficult Second Album

7/30/2019 Difficult Second Album

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Difficult Second Album


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A selection of small pieces distilled from my haiku-and-not-haiku blog Beachcombing For The Landlocked.This is my second collection, and draws mainly from my 2011 posts.

For my earlier collection, covering 2009-10, look for BftL's Eponymous First Album, which you can read(full-screen recommended) or (preferably) download the PDF, also free at Scribd.com.

If you enjoy them, please share the link on your social networks.

Dedicated to all my friends worldwide, on twitter and on blogs, who also writesmall things - haiku, tanka, smallstones and fragmentary literature in all itsmyriad forms. Your generosity of spirit is a wonderful thing and greatly valued.Thank you for being there!

-MarkH

twitter : @forgottenworksBeachcombing For The Landlocked : http://thefragmentworks.blogspot.comemail : [email protected]

copyright Mark Holloway 2013


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one


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january rain

the unceasing patter

of a cold-caller


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extent of the debt crisis

even the moon's light is borrowed

from the sun


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low sun ringing the scrap metal man's handbell


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theweight of clouds

i can't hold this sky up

on my own


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scarcely a thought in my head but 100 billion neutrinos


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old hollow tree

somehow words continue

to bud


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new moon . . .

a lacuna in the text

is where you'll find me


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A small but true story. There is a second-hand bookshop on our side of town. But I hadnever been in there, partly because I rarely have cause to stop off at that little parade ofshops, and partly because, being charity-run, it is only open for a few hours a week. Mygoing past and its opening times never seemed to coincide. Except on that day.

It's a higgledy-piggledy kind of place. Shelves floor to ceiling, and stock having longoverwhelmed attempts to constrain it by alphabet or genre. Mr Dewey's new-fangledDecimal book classification System wouldn't even get a look in.

My way between the shelves was blocked by an elderly gentleman so I had to make adetour, and as I did so a particular paperback's distinctive pale blue cover caught myeye. Leafing through it, a volume of modern poetry* translated from the originalGerman, I felt a sense of recognition. Had I read it before? Well, flipping to the inside

front cover . . . I saw my own name written there. It had been my very own copy!

Of course, I had to buy it again.

I have tried to work out when I would have bought it the first time, and then, when andwhere I let it go. Twelve years, certainly, and possibly fifteen or more since I saw it last.I would love to know whose shelves it had been on in that time, and what journeys ithad made before our paths crossed once more . . .

*Well, when I say modern . . . 1969.Invisible Hands, poems by Karl Krolow, translated by Michael Bullock.


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noThing to read but my palimpsest self


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two


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partial eclipse

we play rock, paper

scissors


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from distant stars the past arrives traveling light


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expanding universe

it's no one's fault

we're drifting apart


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between thunderclouds the spade strikes a stone


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sun between clouds

on a dead bird the flies

flash blue


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her funeral

clutching a shard

of sea glass


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dune grasses somehow i'll hold it all together


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a white butterfly

heads out to sea . . .

spindrift


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summer night ascent of honeysuckle to the hazy stars


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interlocking hills

somehow my hand

finds yours


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but i'm not a mindreader . . .

cloud shadows

crossing the headland


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a coastal walk

to sort my thoughts out

longshore drift


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the distance to the bay's horizon 17 masts


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i am . . .

cloud shadows

skimming the water


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half moon in a blue sky blue dragonfly


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water striders ever between worlds i make my way


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three


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the rattle of poppy heads

how gossip

starts


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in a glass case look! my collection of clouds


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undulating cloud an acorn in the squirrel's pause


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what i thought were mountains

turned out to be clouds


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however the planets align

a stack

of pumpkins


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it's too late!

like starlight i should have set out

earlier


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this life the shooting star i missed


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black hole the gravity of the word widow


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november rain

a child's swing sways

the weight

of wet leaves


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failing light reading the stone wall's lichen braille


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waning moon

our elderly neighbour

speaks

of her loneliness


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christmas shoppers

the many jostling heads

of the balloon seller


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winter river

a cormorant breaks surface beyond

its ripple


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year's end

the world pays no heed to us

backwater swans


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but then, i've always been driftwood


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the end

thank you for reading


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Documents

Difficult Second Album