Haiku Dialogue

Haiku Dialogue: What’s at Hand Week 3

 

 

Welcome to Haiku Dialogue — What’s at Hand Week 3 with Guest Editor Craig Kittner.

Let’s talk about haiku! Through June 26 we will see what 21 common objects can inspire.

Next week’s theme is a smooth coin.

Immerse yourself in the theme, then submit one original, unpublished haiku via our Contact Form. Please note the new deadline is Saturday at 6:00 pm eastern time. Include your name as you would like it to appear and your place of residence.

By submitting you agree that your work may appear in the column — neither acknowledgment nor acceptance emails will be sent.

I will select haiku that make good use of the theme and that are likely to generate lively discussions. I’ll add some thoughts below each week’s selections to get the conversation started.

This week’s theme was a borrowed book.

borrowed book –
between page six and five
a four-leaf clover

Adrian Bouter

 

a robin’s song –
searching for the right words
in a borrowed book

Agus Maulana Sunjaya
Tangerang, Indonesia

 

a hot cocoa swirls
by the ticking crocodile
overdue book fines

Alan Summers
Neverland, England

 

a borrowed book-
an old love letter
and my dilemma

Aljoša Vuković

 

borrowed paperback where it falls open

Ann K. Schwader
Westminster, CO

 

a rose pressed
on The Last Ride Together _
grandpa’s initials

arvinder kaur
Chandigarh, India

 

borrowed book
my wish deepens
with each page

Blessed Ayeyame
Ughelli, Nigeria

 

margin notes
a story within a story
from a borrowed book

Bona M. Santos
Los Angeles, CA

 

borrowed book
the story behind
a pressed rose petal

cezar-florin ciobîcă

 

a coworker
I’ve lost track of
borrowed book

Deborah P Kolodji
Temple City, California

 

book of love poems
borrowed and betrayed
beneath my pillow waiting

Greer Woodward
Waimea, HI

 

old novel
the musky smell
of love letters

Hifsa Ashraf
Pakistan

 

sense and sensitivity
the distraction
of marginal notes

Ingrid Baluchi
Ohrid, Macedonia

 

library book
I borrow a stranger’s
rainy afternoon

Isabel Caves
New Zealand

 

worn library book
an entire town
in the margins

Jennifer Hambrick

 

dog-eared pages
she had to learn
for herself

Joan Barrett
NY

 

between the words
an unfamiliar scent
the book he returned

Joanne van Helvoort

 

turning a new leaf
I consider returning
the borrowed cheque book

John Hawkhead

 

her favorite book
yellow highlighter marks
suggestions duly noted

Kimberly Spring
Lakewood, Ohio

 

in the book
he borrowed—
new wrinkles

Laurie Greer
Washington, DC

 

suddenly empty
the house in the alley…
borrowed book

chiusa per sempre / la casa nel vicolo … libro in prestito

Lucia Cardillo

 

new wine-
the tasteful memory
of a borrowed story

Luisa Santoro
Rome, Italy

 

deep winter
reading a dead friend’s book
on alchemy

Lucy Whitehead
UK

 

missing pages
even his name
now faded

Margaret Walker

 

written in its margins
someone I never knew
old friend’s book

Marietta McGregor
Canberra, Australia

 

guilt tripping…
the borrowed travel guide
I never returned

Mark Meyer

 

end of liaison
returned to the library
‘the art of loving’

Marta Chocilowska
Warsaw, Poland

 

borrowed book
I punctuate
the marginalia!

Martha Magenta
UK

 

lamaze class…
her library book
overdue too

Michele L. Harvey

 

in the margins
of a borrowed book –
erased scribbles

Muskaan Ahuja
Chandigarh, India

 

bookshelves cleanup …
first book of haiku borrowed
from a friend long gone

Natalia Kuznetsova
Russia

 

holding a part
of my long-gone friend
this borrowed book

Pat Davis
Pembroke, NH USA

 

borrowed book
I smooth the corners
of dogeared pages

Peggy Bilbro
Huntsville, Alabama

 

old friend’s book
too late now
to return

Rehn Kovacic

 

long after
her bookmark
in genesis

Roberta Beary
County Mayo, Ireland

 

your cold hand
slides inside my pocket
a well-thumbed book

simonj
UK

 

living room
dust in the gap
of the bookshelf

Slobodan Pupovac
Zagreb, Croatia

 

War and Peace
borrowed words
the weight of them

Stephen A. Peters

 

what would Buddha think?
your copy of heart sutras
unreturned

Susan Rogers
Los Angeles, CA USA

 

borrowed time . . .
a history book
from the library

Valentina Ranaldi-Adams
Fairlawn, Ohio USA

 

a borrowed book
on other borrowed books
falling snow

Victor Ortiz
Bellingham, WA

 

blind date never returns
“fifty shades of grey”
my only braille copy

Wendy C. Bialek
AZ, USA

 

How different it is to read a book that you borrowed rather than one you bought. Knowing that what you hold has been held before. Taking in not only the author’s words, but also the look and feel of an object manipulated and marked by other hands. What secrets might it contain? How well will you keep them?

Marietta McGregor captures this well, as a book’s marginalia reveals new things about an old friend. Was lending the book a deliberate attempt to deepen their connection?

Marginalia was a common theme this week. (And I wasn’t even aware of this satisfying word until Martha Magenta’s haiku caused me to Google it . Thanks, Martha!) Bona M. Santos caught my attention by observing that a book’s margin notes created a second story within it. Jennifer Hambrick takes it a step further, with margin notes that hold the group consciousness of a whole town. Muskaan Ahuja captures an air of mystery with erased margin notes. Who erased them and why?

Items found within a book also showed up a lot. By reversing six and five, Adrian Bouter makes the four leaf clover jump out from his haiku, as I’m sure it did from the book in which he found it. The double meaning of “the story behind” makes the line an effective hinge for cezar-florin ciobîcă’s poem.

A third common theme was loss, which some handled with lightheartedness and others with melancholy. I was deeply amused by the multiple layers of double entendre in Wendy C. Bialek’s “blind date never returns.” I was equally saddened by Margaret Walker’s  “missing pages.” Was it just an old book from which his name is fading, or are memories disappearing as well?

With borrowed books one inevitably thinks about time. For if the book is never returned, it is not truly borrowed. Alan Summers supersaturates his haiku with time. The cocoa is hot now, but will cool. It’s swirling now, but will stop. Each tick of the crocodile’s swallowed clock is a second gone. The book is overdue, and each day adds to the fine. And what is Peter’s story, but a refusal to accept time’s inevitability and all the forces aligned against that refusal? Alan, if you are truly in Neverland, please send better directions. I can never figure out which star is the second from the right!

Lastly, I’d like to acknowledge the boldness and confidence of Slobodan Pupovac’s submission. Without naming this week’s theme, he captured it beautifully. His haiku is an excellent example of don’t tell, show.

What caught your interest this week? Please join in the conversation below.

 

Guest Editor Craig Kittner lives near the banks of the Cape Fear River in Wilmington, North Carolina. He has worked as a gallery director in Washington, DC, and a program director for the Kentucky Arts Council. He is a member of the North Carolina Poetry Society and likes to dabble in community theater.

 

Katherine Munro lives in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and publishes under the name kjmunro. She is Membership Secretary for Haiku Canada and an Associate Member of the League of Canadian Poets. She co-edited an anthology of crime-themed haiku called Body of Evidence: a collection of killer ’ku.

After several years of moves, Craig Kittner has put down roots in the sandy soil of Eastern North Carolina. There the sunshine is clear. The climate gives rise to riotous growths of wildflowers. Birds abound, and the sky is alive with ocean breezes. Craig is content to walk the forests and beaches, gathering imagery for his poems. His work has been published in Frogpond, Chrysanthemum, Failed Haiku, bottle rockets, and the Autumn Moon Haiku Journal. In 2018, he had two poems selected as judges' favorites in the 5th Annual Golden Haiku Competition, and one poem selected for the Winston Salem Writers' Poetry in Plain Sight project. His first chapbook, Time's Sweet Savor, was published in 2016 by New Books on Front Street, an imprint of Old Books on Front Street in downtown Wilmington.

This Post Has 76 Comments

  1. Love the very visual and suttle
    loving room by Slobodan Pupovac
    …that dust in the gap is felt and seen

  6. So many wonderful haiku in this week’s selections. Thank you, Craig – very nicely chosen. As always, quite a few stood out to me, particularly these:

    a hot cocoa swirls
    by the ticking crocodile
    overdue book fines

    Alan Summers

    This took me several reads to explore the various paths hidden. Masterfully done, Alan! And a 5-7-5 at that!

    And then –

    missing pages
    even his name
    now faded

    Margaret Walker

    Another favorite. Ah…the passage of time. Thank you, Margaret.

    Another on a familiar theme from Rehn. I have a couple of these in my library. Wistfully presented, Rehn. Thank you!

    old friend’s book
    too late now
    to return

    Rehn Kovacic

    And from Victor,

    a borrowed book
    on other borrowed books
    falling snow

    Victor Ortiz

    A great visualization of books piled upon each other – just as the snow we’re experiencing. Very nicely done!

  7. deep winter
    reading a dead friend’s book
    on alchemy
    .
    Lucy Whitehead
    UK
    .
    The suggestiveness of transformation and new life available to us even in the heart of winter is an insightful experience shared by this haiku. Thanks, Lucy!

    1. Yes a beautiful feeling of wished for magic … transforming ecpeience by Lucy and sensitive insight from Victor!

  8. Feasting again on this week’s haiku, I noticed I’d not commented on Aljoša Vuković’s though I’d intended to:
    .
    a borrowed book-
    an old love letter
    and my dilemma
    .
    One wonders: was the dilemma whether or not to honor the privacy of the letter writer who might or might not have been the lender? Could, instead, the letter have been one the reader stuffed in the pages of a borrowed book never returned? If the latter, might the dilemma have been to disclose its contents — or not? I remember once happening upon an old cassette with sensitive personal information recorded on it by someone now gone but well known to me. I too was faced with a dilemma. Ultimately I destroyed it, a decision I agonized over at the time but never afterward regretted.

  10. missing pages
    even his name
    now faded
    .
    Margaret Walker
    .
    .
    This haiku reminds me that there is always something missing, whether overlooked, or we have moved home or workplace, or entered another ‘age phase’ or an old romantic relationship that started well. There is something always ‘missing’ although it need not have negative connotations.
    .
    Something that is faded on a page suggests a fountain pen signature? Or pencil. Unlike the more permanent ‘biro’ ballpoint markings.
    .
    There is strong word placement here with:
    .
    missing
    even
    now
    .
    .
    And the contrast and contradictions of now and faded make this very brief of haiku very strong. And different nuances can be created, here is just one:
    .
    .
    missing…
    …his name
    now…
    .
    .
    Placement is a powerful method in haiku.

    1. Alan –

      Thank you very much for your comments. You always help me see elements of which I was not aware!

      Margaret

  12. borrowed book –
    between page six and five
    a four-leaf clover

    Adrian Bouter

    This one is really something
    I love it

  13. Thank you all for visiting and contributing to this week’s posting. I appreciate your support and good vibes.

  14. Thanks for including mine, Craig! I was a library rat and have read margin notes- some questioning, angry, angst-ridden or love sick to name a few. I always wondered about these back stories within a book.
    It is such a pleasure to read the poems this week especially those with library references.

    1. Bona M. Santos said:
      .
      ” I was a library rat and have read margin notes- some questioning, angry, angst-ridden or love sick to name a few.”
      .
      I’d love to see some of those instances in your haiku or even haibun sometime! 🙂
      .
      .
      Bona said:
      .
      “I always wondered about these back stories within a book.”
      .
      You could definitely have either a haiku or just a sentence about each different margin note, and then create a haibun or more around them! Sounds like you came across a vast number of marginalia. 🙂

      1. My library days was so long ago but thanks for the suggestion, Alan! I could make a project out of that. I am quite new to haiku and still learning how to do a proper haibun. 😬
        Thanks for your wonderful insights. They have been very helpful to me.

        1. The great thing about haibun is that the genre is so open now, so just think of Flash Fiction or just a piece of prose, and a haiku or two that don’t mirror or repeat anything in the prose. 🙂

  15. i wanted to add that i totally related to the poems that mentioned references to overdue books/and the time pressure
    And the Lamaze…….
    also the poem that Marta wrote about a relationship.
    and the various items found inside a used book…including odors.
    and not being able to return a book or retrieve a book.

    Maybe that covers them all?

    2. Wendy.
      .
      And Marta
      .
      This also seemed particularly poignant as authentic…
      .
      end of liaison
      returned to the library
      ‘the art of loving’
      .
      Marta Chocilowska
      Warsaw, Poland
      .
      Jan in Texas

  16. this was a subject…i found to be as stimulating to the mind, heart and spine as a great book itself! This group dynamic is fascinating, the feedback is so educational…and i am so glad to be involved each week. Thank you for posting these fine efforts, Craig. Love the poems here and the different expressed visions….most of which i relate to 100%. I do love the poem, with the gap in the bookshelf….which can be filled-in with any story tale, love the poems that talk about the marginalia, too! Thank you Craig, for including my racy poem here…glad it entertained you…and that you understood my unique humour….btw: i, too, did not mention the words: “borrowed book” in my poem.

  17. Craig said:
    .
    “With borrowed books one inevitably thinks about time. For if the book is never returned, it is not truly borrowed. Alan Summers supersaturates his haiku with time. The cocoa is hot now, but will cool. It’s swirling now, but will stop. Each tick of the crocodile’s swallowed clock is a second gone. The book is overdue, and each day adds to the fine. And what is Peter’s story, but a refusal to accept time’s inevitability and all the forces aligned against that refusal? Alan, if you are truly in Neverland, please send better directions. I can never figure out which star is the second from the right!”
    .
    .
    re:
    “Alan Summers supersaturates his haiku with time”
    .
    Ah, yes, Karen (the writer and film-maker Karen Hoy) did say there was rather a lot in that haiku, which is also 5-7-5 (in English syllabics). 🙂
    .
    But I like to pen different types of 5-7-5 haiku in English. 🙂
    .
    .
    The times I’ve paid substantial fines I should be an honoured patron. 🙂 The last time they had a handy machine that you could feed coins, and I was so brassic, I was excited about finding bags of copper (1 & 2 British penny coins) and fed them in. Only problem they were so loud and took so long to pay five to ten quid’s worth of fines! The librarians were frowning, mostly because they guessed it was pennies. But I was so temporarily incredibly broke aka brassic. 🙂
    .
    There are certainly many Peter Pans of one extreme or another, and many of our species fight against time, with no success.
    .
    Regarding directions, for security reasons I cannot be too specific, but can give you this man’s directions:
    .
    .

    “Second star to the right and straight on ’til morning. ” ― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
    .
    Barrie also writes that Neverland is near the “stars of the milky way” and it is reached “always at the time of sunrise”.
    .
    .
    Good luck! 🙂
    .
    And thank you for the commentary! 🙂

    1. I would like to offer an alternate third line:
      .
      a hot cocoa swirls
      by the ticking crocodile
      clocking up book fines
      .
      I find it more musical.

      1. Cheers! ` 🙂
        .
        I have done a haiku with three ‘ing’s in it (Presence) just to prove it can be done, but wary of three verbs in such a short piece?
        .
        It’s great but wanted a counter point or maybe a Max Martin/Denniz Pop perhaps?

        1. I entered a ku for a sense of place with four ings, two verbs.
          Surely “ticking” is an adjective in your short piece.

  18. a robin’s song –
    searching for the right words
    in a borrowed book

    Agus Maulana Sunjaya

    Thankyou for sharing this little joy.

  19. Marvelous selections, CRAIG, deepened by your canny commentaries. Loved them all, but especially the one noting
    Alan Summers’ time “supersaturation.”
    .
    Felt myself wanting with Isabel Caves to “borrow a stranger’s / rainy afternoon”—and “(un)erased scribbles” a lá Muskaan Ahuja. Or Victor Ortiz’s “falling snow.” Then I could snuggle by a fireside with whatever mysterious volume had left “dust in the gap”of Sloban Pupovac’s bookshelf, or the library’s, while sipping some of Alan’s enticing hot chocolate.
    .
    Was moved by Marta Chocilowska‘s return to the library of the no longer needed ‘the art of loving’ because of the “end of a liaison.” A sad experience not unlike one of my own. Would have been equally undone if “between the words” of a book returned by my significant other I sniffed, as Joanne Van Helvoort put it, “an unfamiliar scent” —perhaps of another’s cologne?
    .
    Nostalgia assailed me as I read Natalia Kuznetsova’s “first book of haiku / borrowed from a friend long gone.” And again with Margaret Walker’s “missing pages” and faded name. It grasped me even moreso when Pat Davis felt she was “holding a part / of my long-gone friend” when taking up “this borrowed book,” and Lucy Whitehead experienced “deep winter /reading a dead friend’s book/ on alchemy” which itself evokes transformation. It hit me forcefully again reading Rehn Kovacic’s “old friend’s book/ too late now/to return.”
    .
    I’d forgotten how layered with others’ hands and hearts a “worn library book” could be until I read how Jennifer Hambrick found “an entire town / in the margins” and Marietta McGregor confessed that in similar margins she encountered someone she “never knew.” At the same time Martha Magenta intrigued me with her admission, “I punctuate / the marginalia!” Did she mean that figuratively only or literally too?
    .
    All in all, the “sense and sensitivity” of this week’s haiku provided me more with attraction than “distraction.” Thanks, Ingrid Baluchi, and poets here, every one.

  20. Craig, thank you for commenting on my “missing pages”!
    Thank you, too, for being the editor fit this haiku adventure. Each prompt provokes a myriad of “stories” and images to challenge us.

  21. After reading Craig’s comments, I took another look at Slobodan’s poem:
    living room
    dust in the gap
    of the bookshelf
    This way of writing haiku – showing rather than telling – is so challenging, and I agree that this poem is a fine example of it.
    Other poems that grabbed my attention were Valentina Ranaldi-Adams’ “borrowed time…” I have been a library user my whole life and this poem reminded me of how one can “borrow” another person’s life or point of view through books.
    I also learned a new word -“marginalia”- thanks to Martha Magenta’s poem. Thanks for that!
    Finally, Jennifer Hambrick’s “worn library book” brought a whole town of readers and borrowers into one succinct poem.
    Every poem brought enjoyment on this cold and snowy day – a perfect day for reading a book whether or not it is borrowed!

  22. My favourite this week:

    living room
    dust in the gap
    of the bookshelf

    Slobodan Pupovac
    Zagreb, Croatia

  24. As a school librarian I was maybe feeling a little to close to this one. I am very partial to Isabel, Jennifer, Marta, Michele and Valentina’s haiku. Just wonderful takes on the borrowed book theme. Isabel’s and Valentina’s strike just the right mood. Jennifer’s reminded me of the many cozy mysteries I read with the setting being a library. Marta’s and Michele’s are clever and spot on. I wrote one along the lines of Michele’s years ago which I will see if I can dig up. Just excellent and all of these are haiku that I was trying to write and could not! Love them.

    library book
    I borrow a stranger’s
    rainy afternoon

    Isabel Caves
    New Zealand

    worn library book
    an entire town
    in the margins
    Jennifer Hambrick

    end of liaison
    returned to the library
    ‘the art of loving’

    Marta Chocilowska
    Warsaw, Poland

    lamaze class…
    her library book
    overdue too

    Michele L. Harvey

    borrowed time . . .
    a history book
    from the library

    Valentina Ranaldi-Adams
    Fairlawn, Ohio USA

    1. Thank you very much for your comment, Sari. I’m so pleased you like my poem!
      Best wishes,
      Marta

  25. Dear Craig,
    Greetings! What a lovely approaches of books! My choice for special admiration, the following three.
    !

    robin’s song –
    searching for the right words
    in a borrowed book

    Agus Maulana Sunjaya
    Tangerang, Indonesia

    a hot cocoa swirls
    by the ticking crocodile
    overdue book fines

    Alan Summers
    Neverland, England

    end of liaison
    returned to the library
    ‘the art of loving’

    Marta Chocilowska
    Warsaw, Poland

    3. Thank you dear Radhamani
      I’m elated that you enjoy my work

      robin’s song –
      searching for the right words
      in a borrowed book

      Agus Maulana Sunjaya

  26. So many similar haiku this time, especially about margin notes. There might be enough for a (haiku chapbook) anthology on this subset of the ‘borrowed book’ theme. And the second subset of loss. The borrowed book that can’t be returned.

    a hot cocoa swirls
    by the ticking crocodile
    overdue book fines

    Alan Summers
    Neverland, England

    Alan Summer’s haiku is evocative. Not sure about the need for the Neverland clue. Is it necessary?

    These two mysterious haiku caught my interest for what is left unsaid:

    library book
    I borrow a stranger’s
    rainy afternoon

    Isabel Caves
    New Zealand

    a borrowed book
    on other borrowed books
    falling snow

    Victor Ortiz
    Bellingham, WA

    and finally a bit of haiku humor is always welcome:

    lamaze class…
    her library book
    overdue too

    Michele L. Harvey

      1. I didn’t notice you were from Neverland—well played! The first clip is funny. I may have to do it at our next variety show where I always do a comedy bit with a friend.
        .
        Watch for me to insert a change of residency in the future…
        .

  27. As soon as I read the first of the marginalia poems (Bona Santos), I was immediately reminded of a book by J.J. Abrams called Ship of Theses written by Straka. It is a book full of notes, a correspondence between two people who comment upon the book as well as become friends through the notes. I will read it sometime as it will take years to process it all. Everyone’s after that just reinforced my feelings about finding notes in books.

    A great collection, but to read them all more thoroughly.

    1. What an interesting tidbit about Jj Abrams! Thanks for sharing and for making my poem remind you of that fascinating correspondence.

      1. Bona,
        Have you seen the book I mentioned? If not, it is worthwhile to open the book just to see all the notes and parts within. Someday I will own a copy so that I can read it properly, marginalia and all.

  28. As soon as I read the first of the marginalia poems (Steve Bonn), I was immediately reminded of a book by J.J. Abrams called Ship of Theses written by Straka. It is a book full of notes, a correspondence between two people who comment upon the book as well as become friends through the notes. I will read it sometime as it will take years to process it all. Everyone’s after that just reinforced my feelings about finding notes in books.

    A great collection, but to read them all more thoroughly.

  29. So many wonderful untold stories here–and so much wit throughout the selections–

    In the first category am especially struck by:

    borrowed paperback where it falls open

    Ann K. Schwader
    Westminster, CO

    dog-eared pages
    she had to learn
    for herself

    Joan Barrett
    NY

    suddenly empty
    the house in the alley…
    borrowed book

    chiusa per sempre / la casa nel vicolo … libro in prestito

    Lucia Cardillo

    and in the second:
    sense and sensitivity
    the distraction
    of marginal notes

    Ingrid Baluchi
    Ohrid, Macedonia

    guilt tripping…
    the borrowed travel guide
    I never returned

    Mark Meyer

    borrowed book
    I punctuate
    the marginalia!

    Martha Magenta
    UK
    such a telling !

    lamaze class…
    her library book
    overdue too

    Michele L. Harvey

    But love something about each of the poems this week. Again–amazing how revealing the prompt object has proved!

    2. Laurie, thank you for commenting on my haiku. I am new at writing them and at using this site, so I truly appreciate your taking note of my effort.

      Joan

      1. Dear Joan,
        .
        .
        dog-eared pages
        she had to learn
        for herself
        .
        Joan Barrett
        NY
        .
        .
        I keep coming back to your poem, and love the opening line which continues to give across the next two lines. Excellent!

  30. Thank you Craig for publishing my haiku.
    .
    My favourites
    .
    worn library book
    an entire town
    in the margins
    .
    Jennifer Hambrick
    .
    Ssssh – In small towns and villages, you recognize the names of previous borrowers and know what they have all been reading!
    .
    .
    old novel
    the musky smell
    of love letters
    .
    Hifsa Ashraf – I find this haiku very evocative
    .
    .
    Mark Meyer’s guilt tripping over a borrowed travel guide
    .
    and
    .
    old friend’s book
    too late now
    to return
    .
    Rehn Kovacic
    .
    ease my guilt over not returning a book before time ran out – I’m not the only one.

  31. Privileged to have been included, thank you Craig, and for your comments on some of those chosen. Comments from everyone here are such a huge and useful plus in this forum.
    .
    I was captured immediately by Lucia Cardillo’s:
    .
    suddenly empty
    the house in the alley . . .
    borrowed book
    .
    and
    .
    Rehn Kovacic’s
    .
    old friend’s book
    too late now
    to return
    .
    My father, who had so few possessions in life that meant anything of sentimental value to him, lent his lifelong favourite book to his dear old friend. The friend passed away some time later and his belongings were quickly disposed of by family. Leaving time for their grieving, my big regret was discovering too late where Dad’s book had gone. It still brings a lump to my throat.
    .
    Fascinating that these little what’s at hand items can bring out so much for us in different ways.

    1. I am happy that my poem brought back a memory of your father–although a sad one. Your poem highlights my love of reading notes left in the margins of Library books. Thank you.

      Rehn

  32. Many thanks for including my piece this week Craig. This week’s collection is very thought provoking, I love it. One that stood out to me, tugged at my heartstrings:

    book of love poems
    borrowed and betrayed
    beneath my pillow waiting

    Greer Woodward
    Waimea, HI

  33. Thank you, Craig, for publishing my poem 🙂
    Is this a Peter Pan reference in Alan’s poem? I like it 🙂
    *
    a hot cocoa swirls
    by the ticking crocodile
    overdue book fines
    *
    Best wishes to all!
    Marta

    1. Hi Marta!!! 🙂
      .
      Yes, I thought I’d add Neverland to my address to give an extra clue too! 🙂
      .
      You said:
      “Is this a Peter Pan reference in Alan’s poem? I like it” 🙂
      .
      .
      a hot cocoa swirls
      by the ticking crocodile
      overdue book fines
      .
      Alan Summers
      Neverland, England
      .
      .
      As I do a lot of 575ers I thought I’d seek one in here. They can be pesky, as we often get confused and count phonemes instead of syllables. 😉

  34. borrowed book –
    between page six and five
    a four-leaf clover
    Adrian Bouter

    This one brings a sweet image to mind.

    1. Hi Valentina,
      .
      .
      borrowed time . . .
      a history book
      from the library
      .
      Valentina Ranaldi-Adams
      Fairlawn, Ohio USA
      .
      .
      I like how you didn’t go for ‘borrowed books’ exactly but adapted the prompt beautifully! 🙂

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