Two poems from Presence 62, 2018

Haiku


first glimpse

of her ultrasound

. . . opal dawn





Changing light


I don't know why we’ve taken this unknown road.  The sky's a-wash with colour and we've still a way to go. Suddenly you say: 'Look, a hare.' It's poised in the minute of that final blaze, as if in an otherworldly trance. Just one glimpse becomes a lumen print.


Then it lopes into the undergrowth.  Nothing is visible but two large ears and bright eyes peeping through burnished frondescence. What is it waiting for?  For a while we sit in the grace of the moment, expecting some miracle to happen. By now our muse has slipped into evening  . . .


changing light

the full moon offers

a koan

Cover for Moonlight over the Siding

Here is the cover for Moonlight over the Siding:

Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival

I'm delighted to receive an honourable mention in the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Awards for this haiku:

at her bedside
a child she once knew
cherry blossoms

Hazel Hall
Australia

Moonlight over the Siding

I'm thrilled that my collection of published tanka, Moonlight over the Siding was recently accepted for publication by Interactive Press. Each subsection has a coloured image by the late Robert (Bob) Tingey, Antarctic geologist and author of The Geology of Antarctica (1991). Thanks to his wife Nancy for photographing the images. Bob received the Australian Antarctic Medal for services to Australia's Antarctic Program in 1990. Thanks to IP publisher Dr David Reiter for designing the beautiful cover.

Not surprisingly, one of the Bob's best known images is 'Antarctic Waters'. It has been exhibited in the gallery at the Visitors' Centre in the National Botanic Gardens. Here is the poem I chose for it:

beneath the breakers
a hermit crab chooses
an empty shell
I didn't appreciate
the depth of your pain


Click these links to find out more:

http://bit.ly/2yyWhku

http://bit.ly/2RMKW9c

Step By Step

Recently I collaborated with Angelina Egan to produce a chapbook of Tai Chi steps (Yang form), Step by Step. It shows the 24 steps, demonstrated by Angie and photographed by her daughter Bethany, with a meditative haiku related to each one. An inexpensive gift for Tai Chi lovers.

https://www.ginninderrapress.com.au/store.php?product/page/1728/Hazel+Hall+%26+Angelina+Egan+%2F+Step+by+Step

My gratitude to fellow poet Gregory Piko who read and commented before printing and has reviewed Step by Step  on his website:

https://gregorypiko.com/2018/10/14/hazel-hall-and-angelina-egan-step-by-step/

Thanks also to Chrissi Villa, editor of the online haiku and tanka journal Frameless Sky,who featured a full video of Step by Step, read by me and demonstrated by Angie.

Stamped with the Caption

This poem was published Wild, a new anthology edited by Ann Nadge and published by Ginninderra Press.

 My home is under a railway bridge;

I shuffle about in the dust.

Now and then visitors offer bananas

in hesitant finger-filled fear.

Occasionally they might pay for a ride

then all the iPhones will click.

Souvenirs are available, made from fake leather

or plastic, transported from factories in Dacca . . .

Each evening I hobble along with my keeper

down to the river to wash,

disco lights on tourist boats winking.

People on deck point and wave.

Activists want me returned to the wild

(plantations have taken its place).

Supporters assembling with slogans on placards

are handcuffed and hurled into cells for their trouble . . .

Deep in my memory an image persists

where there's nothing but foliage and trees.

Shadows of animals pass in the distance;

I trumpet, but none of them hears.

Wrap me in all the green places you've seen

as years of my life lumber on.

Go home in that tee shirt. The one with my picture,

stamped with the caption I LOVE . . .

Hazel Hall

Dalit

I was very pleased to have this poem  published in Not Very Quiet 2, 2018.

A woman is asleep upon the path.

So close. The concrete holds her like a bier:

Hair combed neatly, faded sari rests

over tired bones and leathered skin.

Scraps of chatter. Shadows glide and cast

fleeting nonchalance across this drear

concrete patch, immaculately swept

where nearby rupees flick and vendors grin.

Thousands, millions hurry through each vast

metropolis where lost ones disappear

into subways, when the damp has pressed

its hand on swags and human hopes are thin,

One day she'll join the others noiselessly.

She could be anyone.

Perhaps she's me.

Hazel Hall

Colorado Boulevard

Silent Night

I was thrilled to have this haibun selected for inclusion in Jim Kacian’s old song: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2017. It’s by peer selection, and a great honour to be included. This is the second time I have had work in Red Moon. The first was for ‘Undercurrent’, a rengay shared with David Terelinck and Carol Judkins.

Silent Night
Hazel Hall ✧ Australia
Our petitions and demonstrations are useless. The government knows it’s on a winner. Jobs and growth. That’s what politicians want. A well-known mining tycoon and his consortium have bought a million acres of prime coastal grazing land from its original owners.

Soon huge machines are sucking up all available peace.

In the factory, portions of pristine soil are placed in mason jars. Each allocation measures exactly one centimeter in depth. Freshly harvested peace blows into the containers, each sealed hermetically and labelled Peace on Earth.

You can’t buy it here, but countries around the world are clamouring for the product.

silent night
under patent
the evening star