Anger rose within
Gall, ire’s yellow blossom –
Spring bouquet of thorns
For Frank’s Haikai Challenge
The Quantumverse
Anger rose within
Gall, ire’s yellow blossom –
Spring bouquet of thorns
For Frank’s Haikai Challenge
Winter hawks its wares
Ice and cold flash their talons –
Snowbirds fleeing south
For Frank’s Haikai Challenge
After college, I spent a few years traveling around Europe, picking up work here and there. In one such adventure, I worked in a shelter for homeless East End London youths. This was back when Docklands still had bombed out buildings from the Blitz and Cockney was what you heard in the streets.
I volunteered for the Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day shifts. It would just be me and about a dozen teenagers who were runaways or who had been tossed out by their parents. They had been living under bridges or worse, and the shelter gave them a place to stay until we could “get them sorted.”
Breakfast and dinner both were beans and toast. Every day, day after day. There was one smallish gas oven/stove, and one pan to heat the beans. You can guess where this is going… Correct! With no cooking experience whatsoever, I went out and bought a huge turkey and all the fixings so I could make the kids a proper Christmas dinner.
My ability to grossly underestimate a situation is a hallmark of my life, and one of the things my friends and family say makes me so endearing.
Dinner a bit late
Turkey rolling on the floor –
Hilarious stuff
For Frank’s Haikai Challenge
Crème-de-Menthe snow cones
Feel green after too many –
Ever falling down
For Frank’s Haikai Challenge
Pine needles give way
Holiday feast of rain, mud –
Thankful for new boots
Our Armistice now –
Fields of crosses row on row
Yet the poppies blow
*With apologies to “In Flanders Fields”
Not a soul about –
Saints and sinners come to naught
Story of our lives
Hollow evening sky
Churchyards empty under moon –
All souls feel unrest