For best viewing click on the first image and use your arrow keys.

As I noted a few posts back, I am scouring hard drives these days. I collected many of the haiku I found in this book, of which I printed only three copies for my church’s Christmas sale. Custom books are rather dear!

I have written a lot about my mother, about her extraordinary nature, about her untimely death at 52 when I was 16 and the misshaping effect that that had on our family.

Poetry should not require commentary, but I think a little here enriches these senryu a little.

• Yes, my birthday is Nov 1st, All Saints Day. I am pretty sure that is me.
• Memories are funny things. Did we have American gumdrops often in Pakistan? Maybe it was just once. A faint olfactory memory of a hint mothballs infusing the gumballs also lingers.
• My mother was a practicing nurse and also trained many nurses in Pakistan and America. These haiku are for the Pakistani ones. Why do people pinch the cheeks of babies and bairns anyway? That boy is not me, but he looks an awful lot like I did.
• In one of our hill station summer residences, we lived on a hillside in front of a small wooded cliff. It was delightful to slide down, sappy pinecones not withstanding.
• Why did a straight-laced formerly Baptist girl like a movie valorizing adultery. I think the scenes of Karen Blixen’s interactions with her servant Farah and the ones of her having to leave might be the key.
• I may still need to hang up that picture.

Finally, “dear” (denoting “costly”)? “Bairns?” Both are rather archaic/British usages (the latter specifically Scottish), but they seemed apt.

And a bonus one.