Haiku

SUMMER-TIME…
Living is easy:
wide-horned shaggy cows, rust-red,
waist-deep in thick sedge.

DIPPER.
white tux, black dj,
takes the ripples of applause,
all the stones a stage.

IN AUGUST?
Driving by Leckmelm,
yellow on a high thin branch –
the year’s first grey hair.

INSIGHT.
A flurry of snow.
Sheep are suddenly dirty
in their new white field. *

SPRING.
Small red-legged gulls,
heads dipped in black chocolate,
are cruising the Tweed.

HAPPENSTANCE…
Carterhaugh. The field
by the well. Horses – black, brown,
and yes, there’s the white…

CHINESE PROVERB.
Because they have song,
not because they have answers,
is why the birds sing.

EFTER MATSUO BASHO.
The puddock lowps, an
the still quate o this auld puil
jist bursts wi a plowp.

*Suggested by a sentence in Kathleen Jamie’s essay, ‘Aurora’, in her book Sightlines.