Not That It’s Loneliness
not that it’s loneliness
just one black bird
in the blue-grey sky
not that it’s loneliness
just standing in the garden
waiting for snow
not that it’s loneliness
just the sound of a jet
behind everything
not that it’s loneliness
just sitting on the wall
between clouds and sea
not that it’s loneliness
just a hole in the door frame
where the mouse went
About this poem
This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2007. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor in 2007 was Alan Spence.
Editor’s comment:
Chloe Morrish writes excellent haiku – I’ve read her collection – and that’s rarer than you might think. (It’s an easy form to get wrong.) She has the haiku eye that sees things clear, and the skill to catch the moment in a few simple brushstrokes of language. The sequence is made up of individual verses, each a perfect haiku in itself. (They even, mostly, have the requisite number of syllables, to please the traditionalists!) That the sequence is more than the sum of its parts is due to the repetition each time of the opening line (and title) – not that it’s loneliness – which becomes almost incantatory and invokes the loneliness / not loneliness that in Japanese is called sabi.
Author’s note:
I wanted to describe a listless kind of loneliness, where time goes by slowly and anything can be stared at for minutes or hours, it doesn’t matter which. But really, I hope this poem (which is really a series of linked haiku) speaks for itself.
