New Year’s dawn…
cranberries
for the mistle thrush

Published by

Helen Buckingham

Helen Buckingham lives in Wells, UK. Her work appears regularly in journals and anthologies including: Frogpond, The Heron's Nest, Modern Haiku, Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years (W.W. Norton, 2013) and nada annunaad: an anthology of contemporary world haiku (Vishwakarma Publications, 2016). She won first prize in the Martin Lucas Award, 2016. Her most recent collection is the Touchstone Award shortlisted sanguinella (Red Moon Press, 2017).

6 thoughts on “”

  1. Grand Helen!
    __ You've generated my senryu thought: grading the wealth of that past grown, we take new steps. _m

    each eve
    a search back to tend
    new steps

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  2. Cranberries are wonderfully useful when our stomach feels too 'acid' but in fact it's actually because they are too alkaline. I can imagine even a bird might need a different kind of fruit from time to time, especially if it's been overindulging over Christmas!

    Karen and myself have got into a tradition that we celebrate New Year's Day by going to bed early the night before, and being up really early for the meadow close by us, and listening to birdsong.

    We don't have cranberries to offer but perhaps I might offer some quality birdseed instead?

    It's a lovely phrase:

    .
    cranberries
    for the mistle thrush

    .

    It feels both uplifting and seasonal, and bringing color to a special new day.

    I used to see mistle thrushes all the time but oddly only written about song thrushes, here's one:

    hard frost–
    the snail-hammerings
    of a song thrush

    Alan Summers
    Muttering Thunder – An Annual of Fine Haiku and Art vol. 1, 2014 
    ed. Allan Burns with Ron C. Moss,

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  5. Very lovely — enjoyed the contrast of hope of a new dawn with the depth/sabi of cranberries wintering over fo the thrush — we have hermit thrushes in our winter garden and in California they also have subtle beauty and a little bit secretive in their habits —-

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  6. I love how this begins with New Year's 'dawn' because it suggests hope for the coming year. The cranberries are left over from Christmas and of course the word 'mistle' of the thrush's name calls to mind 'mistletoe' which is also associated with the festive season. There's definitely a 'ring out the old, ring in the new' vibe going on in this one, Helen. Very effective.

    marion

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