Return to site

A Darting Kiss

· Haiku

I've today awoken to a soft foggy mist outside. Typical February weather for this damp isle floating off the European coast (yet not nearly so far offshore as many of the natives would want.)

It's forty hours since I last logged off from my work laptop, and I'm beginning to temporarily feel like a human being again.

I wrote the haiku below a little while after pulling my partner's freshly-made loaves from the oven. Have you noticed that pseudo-smell that is the absence of a smell? The experience of moving from a place with a strong odour which you stopped noticing, to the interface where fresh, non-scented, air can enter. There's a smell, but it's the interaction of the odour with clean air. The fragrance isn't bread, but the absence of bread. Anti-bread.

Bread aroma fades
When at door ajar I stand—-
Scent returns, inverted

And can you guess what the below describes? Imagine a rosemary bush in the spring, bathed in sunlight, and the garden beginning to teem with new life.

Washed by brazen beams
She steals with a darting kiss
Mellifluous freight...