All Seasons

Continuing to share my contributions to the poetry group’s Platinum Jubilee Collection, this one is a Haiku sequence:

A Queen for All Seasons

Queen Elizabeth,
so young for such commitment.
The Spring of her life.

Summer days roll by.
Her bright smile illuminates
her life of duty.

An eventful life,
constant in adversity.
The trials of Autumn.

With longevity,
still radiant and smiling.
Winter unfolding.

Second of her name,
equal in strength and dignity.
Queen Elizabeth.

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Awry

Seasons all awry;
if it wasn't for the leaves
that are beginning to turn
today could almost be Spring.

Regardless

Whatever life throws at us
Nature carries on regardless.
She knows when the seasons turn
and now the snow has gone,
in the rockery I find
new buds on a primrose, while
in the lawn the first few tips
of snowdrops show.

Battle of the Seasons

Cold and wet — dry and sunny,
back and forth — push and shove,
Winter and Spring — arms akimbo.
Who will win?

Spring

“No matter how long the Winter,
Spring is sure to follow.”

Proverb in various traditions.

One Day

Three seasons, one day;
snow, rain, bright sunshine,
but oh so cold!

Spring Englyn

Snowdrops now their dainty heads show, green stems
extend through cloak of snow.
Signs of Spring; we watch them grow.

Following soon come tulips fair, and bold
gold daffodils bloom where
now the ground is dark and bare.

The seasons are changing, the sun returns
and warms the earth, to shun
Winter’s grip; her battle won.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Whilst looking for something else on the Internet I came across the Englyn form. This is, I understand, an old Bardic poetic form and I thought it would be fun to try to write one. As you can see the form consists of  3-line stanzas. It is a syllable counting form with lines of 10, 6 and 7 syllables respectively. That’s the easy bit!

The rhyme pattern requires end rhymes of AAA. However, (and this is where it gets complicated) the end rhyme of the first line isn’t actually at the end; it can be one, two or three syllables in from the end and the sound of the syllables after the rhyming word are echoed at the beginning of the following line.

You will see I have cheated a bit here, my echoes are not exact, making use of near rhymes and slant rhymes – green stems/extend (Stanza 1),  returns/and warms (stanza 3) and missing out one element in stanza 2 – and bold/gold.

Three Seasons

Three season’s weather
in the space of half a day.
Sun, wind, rain and hail.

Peppered

Seasons slowly change.
Trees peppered with new colours —
fiery reds and golds.

In My Absence

Here and there
the leaves still linger
but many trees are bare.
In my absence seasons alter.
Now returning, I discover
Winter’s in the air.