Dutiful Mother awaits midnight moon
Cooks noodles
For boomerang kid
Chops sticks
Dancing in stir fry
Sand pipers in succulent estuary
Dog sniffs
Fermented bunny
Blue cheese?
Child loves bees
Sounds not sight
Spelling
Curators conserve
Archival fragments
Rats
—————————-
Midnight moon.
Mother cooks noodles
For boomerang kid
Chops sticks
Dancing in stir fry.
Sand pipers in succulent estuary
Dog sniffs
Fermented bunny
Blue cheese?
Child loves bees
If he spells
Write.
World War One Haikus
By: Wally du Temple
1914 / 1918
Trench cycles
Sixty days at front trenches
Thirty days at support trenches
One hundred Thirty days in reserve trenches
Sixty days of leave
Trenches in Europe
A Diachronic of war
In sunrise and sunset.
Over the top!
Cloud covered moon.
Gone too soon
Trench warfare
Battle of Marne
1914
Trench warfare
Blue moon
In fetid puddle
Trench warfare
Battle of Ypres
1914
Trench warfare
Incoming shells.
Exhume earth worms
Autumn leaves
Red from mortar.
Shells
Trench warfare
I’ll be home
By Christmas
Trench warfare
Loos-Artois Offensive
1915
Clouds muffle sunrise
Dapple trenches
In shadow
Trench warfare
Red poppy
In no mans’ land
Yellow air
Summer sulphur
Dust in hair
Bridges
Over trench mud.
Duck boards
Trench warfare
First Battle of the Somme
1916
Trench warfare
Lovely bride
Where are you?
Rat nibbles
Under Orion.
Dead toes!
Trench warfare
Stars above.
Barbed wire
Chapel wall
Trench warfare.
Crumbled all
Trench warfare
Snow in hair.
Sunrise
Trench warfare
Battle of Passchendaele
1917
Snipers and sentries
On the fire
Step
Trench warfare
Naked bodies.
Decomposing
Sunrise
Summer solstice.
Dew droplets
Trench warfare
Food rancid.
Want to go home.
Desolate landscape
Where a field of bright mustard
Once grew
Trench gun fire
Marks morning hate
Come if you dare!
Did a bell toll
At Christmas?
Hearts pound.
Trench smell
Of gangrene.
No Christmas pudding
Dandelion blooms.
Burst of the sun
In the dark of life
Trench legs and arms
Bleed and fester.
Bayonets
Endearing flower
Dandelion.
White milk in stem
Roar of biplane
Over trenches.
Fly boys.
Trench protection.
Mud parapets
And sand bags
All quite
On the western front.
Christmas carols
Trench ‘stand too’
At dawn
Guns readied!
Shattered frost
From barrel site.
Lee Enfield.
Trench rats
Eat brother’s body.
No morgue
Body lice
Despite delousing.
A scourge
Trench foot
Fungal infections.
Amputations.
Melted snow
From shell holes.
Dysentery!
‘Trench’ glazed eyes
Far off.
Shell shock
The Hundred Days
Offensive
1918
A short night
Broken by incoming fire
Under a crescent moon
Ordinance
Thunders the ground
Peonies quiver
White dew.
One drop on each
Cartridge
Flak in air.
Bats flitting
Here and there
Sat on trench latrine. Geese!
A calligraphy in air
Pleads for peace
A horse tethered
To cannon.
Snow on withers
Over shattered meadows
White mist coming.
Gas mask!
Hello spider
I don’t like
Your fox hole
Trenches, strangely silent
At noon, no orioles
Or larks singing
Hunched scarecrow
Nothing to do.
Birds gone
Was that a bat
Or a rat
In disguise?
Trench warfare
Springs and summers
Endless
In the war to end all wars
They perished in all seasons
The two hundred thousand.