After rising at 4.40 am yesterday I expected to sleep well last night. I didn’t.
First waking at 3am I was up again at 4.30, 5.30 and 7.30. Good bit of planning there – I missed 6.30 and slept through the alarm.
You’d have thought that after 60 years I’d have got the hang of sleeping, but it appears not.
As part of my cruise through poetry I now know that if I add a haiku to this post (and grandiloquently call the post an essay) it becomes a Japanese-style poem called a haibun.
Following on from yesterday’s condensed sonnet I’m going to condense another well known poem into haiku form. I originally tried to condense Daffodils, but it kept trying to turn itself into a Limerick. This one worked better. If I acknowledge a debt to John Keats it will reveal the base poem, even if the first line doesn’t.
mist and fruitfulness
poppies and the cider press
swallows gathering
It even falls into 5-7-5 format, even though I wasn’t aiming for it.
Excellent poem, and sorry to hear about the lack of sleep, Quercus. Valerian root works for some people. For me, it’s a good day of going out and digging trenches. 🙂
Yes, gardening works well, I should try to do more. I did think about valerian but I’ll have to check with my doctor first.
That is good idea. Some herbs are as powerful as prescription drugs, and there can be interactions.
I’m now in the hands of the anti-coagulant service so I have to take notice of this sort of thing. 🙂
The poem is excellent but the sleeping is a problem which in my experience won’t get better now.
That’s a worry – first I have trouble sleeping, next I’ll start cycling and playing the flute. Where will it end?
If I can’t sleep I just give in and get up!
That’s what I’m starting to do.
Really, really lovely! However, for some reason, the words aren’t all together. (It was the same with the other poem you shared.) Most of the words are to the left, but two fragments—pop- and swal- are to the far right. and they have hyphens. The poem is still readable but must be pieced together.
I may have managed to correct that one, but it involved double-spaced lines, which don’t really look right to me. 🙁
Well done! Sorry about he lack of sleep. It must catching as I was up before five this morning. Nice haiku 😊
Thank you. Here’s to some good sleep!
Hear hear!
Brilliant
Thank you. 🙂