An excellent birthday gift!

It's my birthday today and my sister bought me this set of "Haikubes" - essentially, role the dice, pick your words, et voila!

The red words give your direction and theme (these are 2 dice), the rest are words.

A great tool for writer's block or just something to spark imagination.

Anyhoo, here's today's roll/cube pick:

Between dreaming, a

precious moonlight quickly calls

into which she rides

Not sure where she got them from but found a place that sells them if you wanted to read more about them.

Springtime Haiku by Sue Akande

credit: Sue Akande

Cream and brown beauty!

A Speckled Wood is perching

In the dappled shade.

Thank You Irena for last night’s wonderful workshop - the first event of the Bridgnorth Music and Arts Festival 2024

credit: Astrid Knudsen

 Thank You Irena

You did the ‘Write Thing’. Inspired

Us to find our voice.

You said each of us

Has a valid, unique voice

And helped us hear it.

Don’t know how to start?

You showed us how to begin,

By pleasing oneself.

There’s no one ‘right way’.

Remember people, places;

What’s made up your lot

And write from your life

However and wherever

You find that takes you.

It’s your voice, your soul

Oft hidden, oft suppressed, yet

Enduring, unquenched.

Just begin writing.

Beginning, middle or end

Disguised or pure truth

Your essence, your voice,

Will emerge from the depths of

Your being - YOUR life.

If you want to begin your writing journey, to find your voice, you are welcome to join the Hightown Writers who meet on the fourth Tuesday of every month, at 7pm in The Spirit Room of Peepo’s restaurant.

The next meeting is Tuesday 27th August.

Summer UK 2024 - a haiku - by Elizabeth Obadina

 

Summer Heat. Red mists

Souls seeping from fevered minds.

Lucifer’s playground.

Testing Time by Tunde Obadina

 

Hidden face, a mask, 

Shadows dance, secrets revealed, 

Silent truths, concealed.

 

The truth being that this haiku was written by AI  !!

Remembrance by Elizabeth Obadina

 Thinking of the dead

In drizzly celebration

In nineteen eighteen.

Today the sun shines.

But twenty twenty three wars

Kill children, few men.

Put children’s lives first

A young man from Palestine

Taught long, long ago.

Wasp by Irena Szirtes

credit Canva

 Wasp buzzes, bothers,

but I still release him from

lethal liquid jam.

Mandolin by Irena Szirtes

credit Irena Szirtes

 My Dad's mandolin,

 long mute; Andy plucks and pulls

 life from its bowed belly.

credit Irena Szirtes

Ken’s Lost Love by Elizabeth Obadina

The love of my life -

Barbie! We were meant to be.

 

No Ken, not for me.

 

Always together,

Made for me, but not to be

Not my cup of tea.

 

Friends, not lovers Ken.

You’re not the love of my life

In this pink heaven.

The Misfit by Elizabeth Obadina

The Misfit

(a story in haiku)

A sales gown shimmered

Hope. Promise. Belle of the Ball.

But so last season,

Finds Bargain Belle, shunned

Hov’ring, not quite fitting in

This Designer World.

Labels matter in

This crowd of shallow no-ones

Who think they’re someone.

They think they’re special

And mock as oiks, newcomers

Who flaunt bargain buys

All unknowingly.

Don’t know their Jimmy Choos from

Their Miu Mius.  Miaow …

Miaow. Poor lost Belle

Adrift in bargain glad rags

In a viper’s nest.

Winter Haiku by Sue Akande

illustration: John Bowler

A flicker of red -

A robin at my feeder

Brightens winter gloom. 

Autumn Haiku by Kath Norgrove

Autumn sunlight

a squirrel chews vigorously

on a hazel nut

Autumn Glow at Kingslow by Sue Akande

photo credit: Sue Akande

 Summer colour fades,

Now other plants start to shine.

Autumn takes over.

 

Rose pink Sedums star,

White blooms form on Fatsia,

Mauve Michaelmas beam.

 

Amber to scarlet,

Sumac gives a stunning show,

Its fiery leaves glow.

Autumnal Weather by Adam Rutter

Photo credit: Kath Norgrove

The wind bends the trees

Branches swaying: the leaves fall

Spinning, floating down

Like sycamore seeds

Rain drops make dotted lines on

Windows and fireguards

Sigh in the wind.

Autumn in haiku by Stuart Hough

We are determined,

to live for love, through love.

To give from the heart.

 

In joyous freedom,

our love to us each and all

As our hearts desire.

 

In Summer’s twilight,

the land mellows before us.

At one with Autumn. 

Watery Autumn by Irena Szirtes

 

Spectral cow parsley

spits seed into black water

striped with dilute sun.

 

Damp, soft-needled with frost, grass licks

the raggy heron's long toes.

 

Barred sunlight bank to

bank and mists, sky's breath, kiss the

canal with Autumn.

Spring Haiku by Val Pedrick

Magnolia Blossom in Bridgnorth                           Photo: Liz Obadina

Beautiful Bridgnorth’s

Burgeoning spring blossoms:

Pink and White splendour

 

April showers sting

Wing kaleidoscoped petals:

Squelching underfoot

 

A Persian carpet

Compressed multicoloured hues:

Herald true May blooms

 

2019

 

Past. Present. Presence. by Elizabeth Obadina ~ a tribute in haiku, on the day of Prince Philip's Funeral, to those wartime youngsters who became our parents

born 1921
aged 18 in 1939

born 1923
aged 16 in 1939

born 1925
aged 14 in 1939

'Teenagers' in Uniform

1939 - 1945

Those nineteen twenties

Babies: My mum. My dad. And

Now Prince Philip – Gone.

My grown-ups are gone.

All gone, except for the one

Who still wears the crown.

With whom ‘fifty two’,

A date we share, makes sharing

Anniversaries

Inevitable,

Marking the passage of time,

And reminding me  

I should grow up, but,

My parents still feel present.

My future’s not past,

Yet …

born 1926
aged 13 in 1939

Elizabeth Obadina on Medium.com

Spring Glow by John Pedrick

Yellow shades of Spring;

Daffodils, Forsythia

and Mahonia glow.

St Nicholas Churchyard, Oldbury, Bridgnorth

Family: New Love by Elizabeth Obadina

 Tiny hands in mine.

Come play with me now Granny!

Lego forever.