John North

Garden Poems

i.
Night rain.
I stamp on slugs.

ii.
Picking nettles,
I pray to become
more nettle.

iii.
Old rose,
thorns hard as nails,
will still be here
long after that fascist bastard's dead.

iv.
Snowdrops
already melting away
quietly, without fuss,
so sure of their return.
The first lesson.

Hungry old dog,
always hungry, always old.
Spring takes its time.

#haiku

Oh, my God 💔

#poetry #poem

In spring the cry
of buzzards

spirals upwards,
the song

of hunting each other
once more

like just-fledged
juveniles.

Blossom reaches up
to the chanting sky

as everything grows,
becomes mountain.

Old cairn
listens

to the fells breathe,
slow as the world turns

sure
as the ploughed earth.

The poem ends.
The poet weeps,
inconsolable.

#senryu

My poem 'Theriac' in Southword 27 (2015)

My mother kept one of these, exactly like this, on a shelf in the living room and I was always fascinated by it as a child. So thanks for bringing back a memory!

It strikes me that @thekatemulgrew.bsky.social and @jerilryan.bsky.social are a pretty kickass combo for #InternationalWomensDay

#wildflowerhour here in the Eden Valley, Cumbria, yesterday morning

fog on the low field
flowers of the sheep’s slow breath
becoming blackthorn

river bend—
a floating leaf
changes countries
#haiku #poetry

The Peace of Wild Things Wendell Berry When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. from Openings: Poems (1968)

My dad used to tell my siblings and me that his favorite sound was silence. I get it now. In the midst of the chaos, in the midst of the turmoil of life in this world and in this head, I sometimes need to remind myself to actively seek silence, and the sounds it lets in.

Same edition I read as a child!

I nearly switched Star Trek Academy off during the first episode. But I'm glad I persisted and got through to the rest of it. It's had me in actual tears TWICE now.

A shepherd boy walks away from an unexploded Iranian projectile that landed in an open field in the outskirts of Qamishli, eastern Syria on Wednesday

𝘐𝘔𝘈𝘎𝘌: 𝘈𝘗 𝘗𝘩𝘰𝘵𝘰/𝘉𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘬𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘈𝘩𝘮𝘢𝘥

Reading 8th Century Chinese scholar Lu Yu wax lyrical about making tea

theherbfarm.co.uk

#poetry #chinese #tea

Some exotic looking dog #lichen in Caldbeck, Cumbria

geese migrating unchallenged
#DailyHaikuPrompt

mewing cat peers in the window morning dew

a pheasant cries
in the temple room's
dead center

Kobayashi Issa (1762-1826)
#haiku #micropoetry
Tr. David G. Lanoue
Date of #poem: 1818

enigma
my ship's long silence
since the moon

tranquillitatis
ship's whispered mantra echoes
when she thinks I sleep

sussurant
vents and drives and pipes
tell me hush

#ScifaikuSaturday (enigma)
#DailyHaikuPrompt (tranquil)

that timid child
stuck in a book — grows bolder
with each new chapter
#vss365 #SenryuSunday #sunday

"Divine laws are simpler than human ones, which is why it takes a lifetime to be able to understand them. Only love can understand them. Only love can interpret these words as they were meant to be interpreted." — Captain Benjamin freekin' Sisko 🖖

The talkative steam
of cup warming to the task,
its mouth breathing ghosts.

#poemsabout #mouths
@alanparrywriter.co.uk
@thebrokenspine.co.uk

The Way of Tea: A New Translation of the Classic of Tea by John North The Classic of Tea, or Chájīng, is a Chinese text over a thousand years old. It is the earliest known extant — and perhaps the most famous — book about tea. Among the very few complete English transla...

A dream of the hills,
bursting into leaf:
trees like bamboo,
vast in the mountains;

flowers of white rose,
the waking mist: cha,
jia, she, ming, chuan —
it is called tea upon the slopes.

theherbfarm.co.uk/product/the-way-of-tea-a-new-translation-of-the-classic-of-tea-by-john-north-1

#poetry

Another early morning wee small hours before dawn thought: I've come to think of God as a heart. A beautiful, leafy heart, gently beating — the way a canopy seems to breathe, a green lung in a summer wind so light you can barely tell it apart from the feeling on your skin of simply existing. 💚

I've often thought the practice of seeking to write poetry leads eventually to prayer. And that the practice of seeking to pray leads eventually to Lao Tzu. And I suppose then one stops seeking. And starts writing poetry.

Have you found a #hedgehog you're worried about?

Follow the simple steps on our website & call us on 01584 890801 - or your local independent hedgehog rescue - as soon as possible.
www.britishhedgehogs.org.uk/found-a-hedg...

📞🦔🩹

Don't delay - you can make all the difference!

💩🧪Fed up with #sewage? Frustrated by pollution? Sick of the state of our rivers?

Us too. Now tell your MP: action.friendsoftheearth.uk/target/clean...

Today we join over 40+ nature groups launching #CleanWaterNow, pushing the UK Government to ensure the Water Bill is what our rivers really need.

The Way of Tea: A New Translation of the Classic of Tea by John North The Classic of Tea, or Chájīng, is a Chinese text over a thousand years old. It is the earliest known extant — and perhaps the most famous — book about tea. Among the very few complete English transla...

A dream of the hills,
bursting into leaf:
trees like bamboo,
vast in the mountains;

flowers of white rose,
the waking mist: cha,
jia, she, ming, chuan —
it is called tea upon the slopes.

theherbfarm.co.uk/product/the-way-of-tea-a-new-translation-of-the-classic-of-tea-by-john-north-1

#poetry