old pond
   oil slick rainbows
      slip in

 

Published by

Lorin Ford

Growing up first in the Seaford Beach/Kananook Creek area and then in Cann River, Croajingolong country, East Gippsland, formed Lorin?s sense of belonging to the natural world. Lorin began writing haiku in 2004. She served on the judging panel for the Haiku Dreaming Awards (2009), on the The Haiku Foundation's Touchstone Books Awards Panel (2010, 2011 and 2012) and was co-judge with Lee Gurga for the H.S.A.?s 2018 Henderson Haiku Awards. Lorin was haiku editor for the first nine (quarterly) issues of Notes From the Gean (2009 ? 2011) and subsequently publisher of A Hundred Gourds (2011 ? 2016) where she served as haiku editor, features editor, managing editor and in other editorial roles. In 2014 she founded the 'Red Kelpie Haiku Group' (Melbourne, Australia), convening four meetings each year until the group broke up subsequent to its twentieth meeting in June 2019. Over the years, Lorin's haiku have received awards and been included in excellent anthologies. Books Published: 'a wattle seedpod' (Post Pressed, Teneriffe, Qld, Australia, 2008); e-chapbooks: 'what light there is' (3Lights Gallery, 2009) and 'A Few Quick Brushstrokes', a winner of the Snapshot Press e-chapbook competition, 2011. All three publications are available online, free of charge.

14 thoughts on “”

  1. I like what Perry said. And thinking of old people, how they've lived so long, done well, and then the oil slicks that look pretty but are deadly slip in.

  2. A gentle reminder of what can slip in when we're not paying attention to our life or the lives of others, when we're neglectful. Love it Lorin.

  3. The allusion to Basho's 'old pond' was probably intended also to echo a common diminutive for the Atlantic Ocean, 'the pond,' both potential sinks, one metaphorical, one real, for petroleum pollution. The planetary breadth of this setting is matched in breadth by the allusion to the story of the Biblical flood and Jehovah's promise (here treated ironically) contained in the rainbow. The promise of a better world delivered by the petro industry, here echoed in the oil slick rainbow, has been inverted by its destructive influence on the world's environment, often coming in the form of torrential, long lasting rains and flooding.
    Or something like that.
    .
    .
    Good poem, Lorin!
    .
    .
    trees topped
    with cooing doves float by
    in summer rain

  4. Will the old pond survive? Powerful juxtaposition of art and nature, past and present. Well done, lorin.

  5. old pond
    oil slick rainbows
    slip in

    Thanks for sharing this haiku. The images here are unforgettable.
    Like what Kalaramesh mentioned, the old and the new have been put into a scene which is sad and colourful at the same time.

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