Irises

 

ladies gathered for
a garden tea and gossip
irises in bloom

 

And in the summer breeze these now beige irises seem to nod and whisper, and if you listen closely — the faint rattle of teacups.

 

Published by

Larry Kimmel

Larry Kimmel was born in 1940, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. He holds degrees from Oberlin Conservatory and Pittsburgh University, and has worked at everything from steel mills to libraries. He now lives quietly in the hills of western Massachusetts. He has 10 collections of poetry, a novella, a book of short stories and a number of other works of prose combined with poetry.

15 thoughts on “”

  1. I love irises, but they do not last long … ephemeral, but perennial, too. Lovely haibun!

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  5. Loved "the faint rattle of teacups" and gossip, although to be sexist, I imagine the human males spilling the beans far more than other genders! :-)

    ***

    I haven't written about the iris flower but…

    corn moon
    ?the jackdaw shifts
    its iris

    Alan Summers
    Asahi Shimbun (International Haiku Day April 17th 2015)

    Translated into Bulgarian:

    ????? – II

    ????????? ????
    ??????? ????????
    ????

    Translations from English to Bulgarian:
    Maya Lyubenova, Tzetzka Ilieva, Vessislava Savova

    Reply

      2. moonlit wild flag irises¹
        a flock²of crows cawing all night

        1. Wild flag iris (Iris setosa) in a Southeast Alaska meadow. Google: <Iris setosa at Iris Meadows on Kruzof Island near Sitka, Alaska, Tongass National Forest, Alaska Region. Photo by Jim Case, Sitka Ranger District.> The image is in the middle of the three.
        2. I’ve been reborn… Google: < No, It's Not Actually a Murder of Crows>

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        1. .
          fifth kind encounter
          humans replace crows
          as an idiom of murder

          Alan Summers
          The Comfort of Crows
          Hifsa Ashraf and Alan Summers

          (Velvet Dusk Publishing, December 2019)

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          1. comfort station
            above the heart murmur’s sound
            a flock of crows cawing caw caw caw caw…

  8. I too have beige irises, flowering just now in Scotland. This from 10 years ago:

    heliotrope heart
    frilled beige petals —
    did i grow this iris?

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