Rory Hudson

Waking up at midnight
in a room without a view,
taking up a book, you find
no pages to look through.
...

(A haiku)

A child is singing:
even birds stop to listen -
...

Again and again, the ghosts of aeons past
walk the narrow corridors of your life.

Again and again, they call to you
...

Many have trod
this sandy beach
seeking for shells.
...

I wish I could have eased your pain
as once we walked along the path
that led along a grassy ridge
and round the hill, and back again.
...

This grassy path
leads nowhere,
and so pleases nobody.
...

Suddenly in summer on a dusty path
a fever takes me, and I see your face
again in the sweltering heat of blue-draped mountains;
or under smoky skies that clutch my throat
...

Vulgarly, among the irises of love,
there sprouts an ugly weed.

On humid, stinking summer nights
...

I thought I might have seen you again
in spring, in places where we lay among the flowers,
young and careless of the passing hours
that left us sighing and to yearn in vain.
...

It’s a lover’s question
that’s asked by the first breeze of spring,
freshborn, still new and shyly venturing
among the buds of green beneath a blue sky.
...

They blend as one,
the ocean
and the man who stands
fishing by night.
...

(A senryu)

A boat passing by:
on the shore where lovers lie
...

Time, you’re a thief
that comes by night
as we sleep heedless.
...

Come with me to Castlemaine
when summer’s in the air
and laughing girls dance through the parks
loosening their hair.
...

These initials, L.O.L. -
at first I thought
they stood for “Lots Of Love”,
but now I learn
...

Forgive me, but I shall leave
by a discreet side door
at the end of this night of goodbyes
which we have whispered to each other
...

(A haiku)

Always in the night
it wells up from depths unplumbed -
...

Through distances of arid time
a voice, half-remembered, half-dreamed,
cuts through the painful skin
that I wear as my disguise
...

(A haiku)

Magpies carolling;
cows ambling beneath the gums
...

(A haiku)

Cold of morning fog
as the fishing boats set out -
...