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. View all posts by Lorin Ford
Love this poem!
Very nice. I like the implication that the oil slick rainbows don't belong.
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.
Amazing tribute to Basho and call for an awakening. Lovely!
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.
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.
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Good poem, Lorin!
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trees topped
with cooing doves float by
in summer rain
That, that we must never poison; Lorin you've said it so well. _m
still pond
as frogs count the stars
a far owl
Very well done, Lorin — the old and the new brought in most beautifully.
Will the old pond survive? Powerful juxtaposition of art and nature, past and present. Well done, lorin.
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.
love the contrast to Basho's pond
A great haiku, Lorin. The oil slick combined with pond made me think of 'across the pond' and spillage from a ship on the Atlantic. I love 'oil slick rainbows.'
marion
Lovely
Lovely!!