Waking The Muse

For Better or Verse. The idea behind these came from an extract of a book featured in The Readers Digest. The concept, although simple, is much harder than it first appears. Take a classic book or play and sum it up in a Haiku. The Haiku rules are as follows:

For those who are lonely and deep in despair With no one to love them and no one to care, As you gaze from your window, watch lovers go by And turn back with longing, a tear in your eye. I wish you Love.

Not much of a title is it, but since it’s the first thing I’ve written in over three months then I guess it’s a start.

Cruel November, empty November, the stone I sit on has lost its heat, An Indian summer, they said on the news, but the sun is sinking into Shadows cast along the riverbank and the leaves fall, burnt umber, sienna brown,

Brutal. To steal my dreams The curve of a blade Slashing through lines Making mockery of feelings That are/once were Real. Pencil scores on paper

I would not want you anyway but this – a pink dawn Rising across the fields –your footprints small in the Dew on the grass – the first faint stirrings of a fractured

So by the time I've written one line it will be February the 2nd and the next February the third, and so on and so forth or the fifth, even the sixth until all the words run down to only one

Swan Song.

I could never have known that my last story would be a fore-runner to what would happen so soon after. The poem is my grieving. I needed to let it all out.

I am slowly loosening my grip on the affairs of the world. Aging more each day, my mind and body are feeling tired My interests are now centred inwards, no longer inspired.