Poetry - September 2025
2nd September, 2025
Drifting pappus seed -
Qu Yuan's Lament.
Cry of buzzard and chorus
of leafsong in September breeze.
Steaming in the cup,
Xiao Yao San.
A touch of sunlight
and the soft kiss of air.
***
My cat hunts a mouse
that I can see, still, between
logs on the front porch.
3rd September, 2025
Beans growing up canes.
This life, short as a haiku.
Structure in all things.
5th September, 2025
Fall in the woodshed,
reading Wolverine comics,
smoking cigarettes.
***
Moonlight; ochoko -
the bruise of saké paler
than the bright black eye.
6th September, 2025
Little magician,
the bairn summons plums and pears
for his grandparents.
9th September, 2025
Not the stars. I go out to see
the night's midnight blue
and the deep, empty
spaces in between
- the parting of our fingertips -
inhabited by our loss.
One life is only as close to the next
as the stars appear to us;
as if we could measure it
between our finger
and our thumb.
***
And outside, dusk.
The sound of a hundred hands
turning page after page
is the cattle in the field
feeding nightly with worn teeth.
And more distant still,
chewing their own cud,
artic HGVs dumbly reciting
the arterial highway's prayer.
And inside-
inside deeper still-
the illiterate cry to god.
***
The concept of speech
alien to God; the Book
a graveyard of trees.
***
Xiao Yao San.
A touch of sunlight
and the soft kiss of air.
***
My cat hunts a mouse
that I can see, still, between
logs on the front porch.
3rd September, 2025
Beans growing up canes.
This life, short as a haiku.
Structure in all things.
5th September, 2025
Fall in the woodshed,
reading Wolverine comics,
smoking cigarettes.
***
Moonlight; ochoko -
the bruise of saké paler
than the bright black eye.
6th September, 2025
Little magician,
the bairn summons plums and pears
for his grandparents.
9th September, 2025
Not the stars. I go out to see
the night's midnight blue
and the deep, empty
spaces in between
- the parting of our fingertips -
inhabited by our loss.
One life is only as close to the next
as the stars appear to us;
as if we could measure it
between our finger
and our thumb.
***
And outside, dusk.
The sound of a hundred hands
turning page after page
is the cattle in the field
feeding nightly with worn teeth.
And more distant still,
chewing their own cud,
artic HGVs dumbly reciting
the arterial highway's prayer.
And inside-
inside deeper still-
the illiterate cry to god.
***
The concept of speech
alien to God; the Book
a graveyard of trees.
***
Leaf reflecting moon -
night sky cherry tree mirror
of sky, of tree ...
***
Full moon so bright I
can read the label on your
bottle of beer
***
Rubbing lavender
flowers against the nape of
your neck is my heart
15th September, 2025
Hope. Small things like
the wood mouse we found in the house
and took to live amongst the bluebells.
21st September, 2025
I would rather let the wine fall
like rain to the ground
than live a life always cupping my hands.
22nd September, 2025
This morning's first frost of autumn
and a fallen horse chestnut out of its shell
peeling back a layer of the exhaustion
of life's sickness and graft.
30th September, 2025
Hush... rain after
the drought's buzzsawing insect hatred
- the still small voice.
#poetry #micropoetry and #haiku first posted on johnnorthwrites.bsky.social
