Saturday, January 3, 2009

Happy New Year to you-- Here's some farmyard haiku!

In the midst of frozen pipe adventures and other January delights, one's mind may be drawn to the flickering warmth of the woodstove's embers and other Creative Sparks. What results from a brief encounter with inconsistent flames? Well, today, the results took the form of some farmyard haiku:

1.
Aimless Guinea Cock
His late mate a fisher's feast
Hens: poor substitutes

2.
Twelve plump russet hens
Egg-proud little red soldiers
Call "Ginger" --all come!

3.
Shaggy Highland cows
Gentle eyes under fierce fringe
Horns work-- try your lights.

Haiku Tag-- you're it! Write a haiku or two about the creatures where YOU live. Remember the basic pattern: three lines, the first one five syllables long, the second one seven, and the third one five syllables again. Like farming itself, the harsh elemental demands of the format often trigger tremendous creativity--and sometimes, you just get compost, but at least it's still good for something!

3 comments:

Mama Pea said...

Here's some homestead haiku for your compost bin.

The first is about a critter but the second just fell out of my head because of our copious quantity of snow.

I gotta go out
California bred dog
I'm done - let me in.

Tons of snow to move
Why buy a gym membership?
Not on our homestead

MaineCelt said...

Mama Pea,

I laughed wonderfully hard at both your poems. Snow DOES things to the brain, doesn't it? And, yes, there have been times when our Maine-born Border Collie gets outside to take care of business and rapidly changes her mind.

Last summer we had two farmhands who kept running off to the gym when they could have been building raised beds and shoveling out the hen house for exercise. We were utterly perplexed by them!

Anonymous said...

Hmmm, yet somehow I remember many more than one occasion shoveling down the path to the hydrant and breaking the cow water bucket with an axe. And still making it to the gym in the afternoon.