Poet photographer

Around this time last year, a friend held an unofficial sonnet-writing contest over Google +.  I didn't intend to participate, seeing as I don't know a sonnet from a limerick, but that's what happens when your only upper-year English class focused on Norse mythology. If it had been a saga identification quiz, I'd have had it made, unless contestants were expected to spell.

A couple days later, I came across this tree: back-lit in the morning sun, flaming orange, and me without a camera, or, let's face it, the skills, to capture what I see. Struck with desire to preserve that moment of beauty, I tried to do with words what I couldn't do with film. Mere letters couldn't do justice to the details of the scene, but I hoped at least to convey that which had me grasping for photography equipment in the first place. I spent my next few preschool drop-off and pick-up walks counting syllables, selecting adjectives, caving to my urge to alliterate. I wrote a haiku.

It was my first time voluntarily writing poetry since the tail-end of grade school, half a lifetime ago. I enjoyed it so much I did another one for a winter scene through the Groat Road ravine, though Blogger tells me hardly anyone read it. I'd meant to do a set for all four seasons, but, like many of my intentions, that clearly didn't happen.

Nevertheless, it's fall again; my choice season for beginning. I'm posting my original haiku, with a nice meaty chunk of prose to trick you into reading it. Bwahaha.

leaves of molten hue

illumined in slanting sunlight

whisper of winter