I am very glad to introduce this month’s guest poet Sheila Butterworth. We met many years ago, in that Yorks/Lancs Branch of the BHS. I let Sheila introduce herself and her haiku.

“Winning the Leeds Waterstones Haiku Competition in 2000, organised by the Yorks/Lancs Branch of the British Haiku Society, introduced me to the world of haiku poets, workshops, journals and a network of local poets with whom to chew the haiku fat. I have since had poems published in Blithe Spirit, Presence, The Snapshot Press Haiku Calendar, Wales Haiku Journal and The Red Moon Anthology.

Most of my haiku come out of the everyday experiences of life within a mile of my edge of village doorstep where I have lived for 40 years. This is where I notice those things that have most meaning to make haiku. The familiar environment highlights the nuances of change in place, in time and in me and this is when haiku happen.”

coming light
the bubble and trill
of robin and wren

high street dawn
the smell of sweet dough
folds into the fog

morning mizzle
molehills spatter
the spring pasture

planting potatoes
startled sparrows
scatter in the quickthorn

summer rain
the shining bole
of a sapling ash

evening sun
the shadow of the wood
fills the field

standing out
in the half light
borage blue

passing by
the old doctor
walks into the wind

the white tip
of a fox’s tail
above the snow

instead
I blow the dust
from a bowl of sea glass