welcome to #12 of hedgerow & the last one for the year. thrilled to bring you a record-breaking 22 poets & artists. grateful for all your support over these past three months, thanks to you hedgerow has grown into a thing of beauty!

feel free to keep sending in your submissions for the new year. the date for #13 will be announced here & on our facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/hedgerowpoems). you can also follow hedgerow on twitter (https://twitter.com/hedgerowpoems).

also a special thanks to Veronika Zora Novak for her beautiful tribute dedicated to the memory of Serbian haiku poet Verika Živković, who sadly passed away this week. to echo Veronika’s words ‘as a community we will continue to celebrate your legacy…’

may 2015 be filled with magic, dreams & creativity for all of you!

with love & kindness,
caroline skanne

Veronika Zora Novak

deeper
into the cosmos…
white lotus

dublje
u kosmosu…
beli lotos

dublje
u kosmosu…
bijeli lotos

(Tr. by Milena Burčul Mrkela)

‘With great sorrow to know of her untimely death, a deeply heartfelt tribute to our dearly beloved sister Verica Živković. As an international, multilingual award-winning haiku poet, may Verica’s profoundly beautiful, passionate and insightful poetry withstand the test of time…’ Veronika Zora Novak

David J Kelly

David J Kelly lives and works in Dublin, Ireland, where he finds scientific and artistic inspiration in the natural world.

Robyn Cairns

outback skies
spread with stars
where the red dirt road
has no end

underneath her skin- moss lined and honey veined

Robyn Cairns is a Melbourne based poet who shares her poetry and photography on twitter @robbiepoet.

Bauke Kamstra

Poetry dispels the illusion of separateness

     when we touch
     when we are touched

we are no longer alone.

*

Will these words explain
my life to me

I don’t know

maybe it is not this life
I’m writing about.

Bauke Kamstra is a poet & visual artist residing in Nova Scotia. His poetry has been published in Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Poetry Nook, Shot Glass Journal, and Spark. His new book We All Reach the Earth by Falling is available at Amazon and B&N.

Susan Constable

when ordinary
is more than enough …
skunk cabbage
blooming in the ditch,
a spider spinning her web

it took years
for my sister to ask
my opinion …
even rivers and robins
have something to say

Susan Constable lives on the west coast of Canada, where she’s been writing mainly haiku and tanka for the past nine years. She is currently the tanka editor for the online journal, A Hundred Gourds.

Stella Pierides

winter sun
piling kindling
for the fire

Stella Pierides lives in Neusaess, Germany, and London, UK. Her poetry book, In the Garden of Absence, won a HSA Merit Book Award 2013, for books published in 2012. Stella manages Per Diem: Daily Haiku for The Haiku Foundation. Homepage: http://www.stellapierides.com

Maurice Devitt

Circle of Life

When you hold the photo
up to the light, who do you see?
The boy I was or the man
I have become,
already shrinking back
to that world of ludo
and slip-on shoes,
where names walk in and out,
never staying long enough
to make an impression.

‘I like short poems because they are easier to smuggle across borders…’ Maurice Devitt, Dublin, Ireland

Shloka Shankar

shoreline…
broken seashells scatter
my dreams

goodbyes…
my tears dry up faster
this time

Shloka Shankar is a freelance writer who resides in India. She is the editor of the literary & arts journal, Sonic Boom. (http://sonicboomjournal.wix.com/sonicboom)

Susan Diridoni

A Yorkshire Noon

out the window
tall trees still bare
sun shows the green moss
upon the branches usually under
leaf canopy
so like the trees at the Abbey
yes, we’re going inward
our crosses being shared
and transformed
it is our Easter

Susan Diridoni, from the San Francisco Bay Area, is on the trail of the muse, no matter where she roams.

Debbie Strange

Debbie Strange is a published tanka and haiku poet, as well as an avid photographer. Her current passion is for creating haiga and tanshi (small poem) art.

Rachel Sutcliffe

waiting room
I wonder what
forever feels like

Rachel Sutcliffe, from Yorkshire, UK, has suffered from a serious immune disorder for the past 14 years, throughout this time writing has been her therapy, it keeps her from going insane!

James Roderick Burns

Only through rain
and beaten grey skies
can the sun burn gold

James Roderick Burns’ short-form collections ‘The Salesman’s Shoes’ and ‘Greetings from Luna Park’ are published by Modern English Tanka Press. He lives in Edinburgh with his wife and daughter, and serves as Deputy Registrar General for Scotland.

Ruth Zuckschwerdt

torrential spring rains
with lightning and thunder
tender new leaves

Ruth Zuckschwerdt, Switzerland, started writing to get her thoughts away from health issues. Publication of Haibun, Haiku and Tanka. Her poetry reflects travels to faraway places. She is now retired and lives in Switzerland.

Zee Zahava

great blue heron
washing dishes
at the kitchen sink —
what are you doing in Grandma’s apron?
what are you doing in my dream?

Zee Zahava lives in Ithaca, N.Y. She writes most of her poems in a small notebook while taking her early morning walks. She is the editor of brass bell, an online haiku journal: http://brassbellhaiku.blogspot.com/

John W. Sexton

a thousand gardens
hide him … the demolished
porcelain golem

John W. Sexton lives in Ireland and was found inside a Christmas cracker in 1958, swaddled in a rather ridiculous joke about bassoons, or probably baboons, or was it spoons? His fifth poetry collection, The Offspring of the Moon, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2013. In 2007 he was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry.

Dave Read

she paints
her toenails black
new moon

water drips
through the coffee filter
I dilute
my thoughts before I
share too much with her

Dave Read is a Canadian poet, whose work has appeared in many journals, including hedgerow. You can find his micropoetry on Twitter, @AsSlimAsImBeing.

Mike Keville

You scare me

No sound.
Except the wind—
a lone wolf
calling for a lost mate.

As chills
explore my back;
they race to be the first
to make me shudder.

My chest held
within your vice;
tightened by
imaginary tales.

Please—
just tell me
how much you spent?

Mike Keville from London AKA Mikeymike.

Christopher P. P. White

For Her

In the spoils of sunshine–
When the birds sing you to sleep
At 5 in the morning
And you get into bed
With the woman that you married
For love and not for comfort
Or conformity,
You see the real reason
Why you need to wake up
In a steady handful of hours
After.
Not for money or a wage
But for her–
Simply for her.
The birds are still singing
That same song
And the beauty of life
Is embellished
In their serenade.

Christopher P. P. White is a poet and writer from Derby, England. He hopes that you don’t judge him too harshly regardless of what you’ve heard.

Chen-ou Liu

A Short Story about Love

at her window
two shadows entwine
in one embrace …
like vampires sucking blood
from my memories

Sitting at my desk, swathed in darkness, I use the new telescope to zoom in on them – watch her rise and fall as the man guides her slow circular movements. His hands slide up from her hips to her breasts, continue to her shoulders, altering her rhythm, pulling her down onto him…

I open the drawer, take out a pocket knife, rush down to the basement parking lot, and find his piercing red Jaguar. Crouching, I plunge the tip of the knife into one of his tires with climactic fierceness; then I stab and I stab…the second, third, and fourth.

I rip out
each page of our life
this sultry night
the dream soaks my bed
with her moaning

Chen-ou Liu is currently the editor and translator ofNeverEnding Story, http://neverendingstoryhaikutanka.blogspot.ca/, and the author of five books, including Following the Moon to the Maple Land (First Prize, 2011 Haiku Pix Chapbook Contest) and A Life in Transition and Translation (Honorable Mention, 2014Turtle Light Press Biennial Haiku Chapbook Competition)

Caroline Skanne

Caroline Skanne is obsessed with anything wild & free, she is the founder of hedgerow: a journal of small poems. find her @ https://www.facebook.com/caroline.skanne.9 & https://twitter.com/CarolineSkanne

Michael Cantin

In Quandary Dilecto

Anne makes me want to love a woman
I know I shouldn’t.
To learn all the romance languages they never teach.
Those tongues only foreign to the uninitiated
Curses levied with need in lieu of simple bitterness
and goodbyes fraught with acceptance.
The sublime loneliness of the other woman
or the other man.
I know I shouldn’t.
I know this with every fiber of my moral tapestry.
And yet conventions are constructs,
and my wants intersect my needs.
The sting of the stitches sings a siren’s song.

Michael Cantin is an aspiring poet and sloth fanatic residing somewhere in the wilds of Costa Mesa, California.

William C. Patterson

For Love

What the mind idealizes & the body desires,
something unknown accelerates, keeps, & makes last.

Some call it soul,
others heart or spirit,
but by whatever name
(& all words lack something essential)
it preserves, persuades, & protects.

It is there in the patter of a child,
in the needful relief of travel,
& in the shared glance of any given day.

It is the promise that makes forever possible;
It is the excitement of knowing one thing doesn’t disappear.

Proof

”[…] Everything in me
Wanted to bow down, to offer up,
To go barefoot, foetal and penitential,

And pray at the water’s edge.”
[Seamus Heaney, ”Triptych” III: At the Water’s Edge]

It wasn’t the picture I was after,
the picture was proof.
The truth is: proximity was all
I desired.

That somehow closeness could prove
friendship, connection, community
led me to the side of the road,
against the barbed fence,
to the edge of the water.

Sometimes seeing is all prayer is.
Or is it: prayer is what seeing is?

Of the three prayers:
praise, forgive, & need,
I prefer the blue heron,
two legs in the water,
bill stabbing southward,
crown raised or fallen.

The moment wings stretch
into lazy flight is
prayer answered
& prayer denied.

There is no sense in waving
as you disappear,
but let this moment
be proof against
the slow current
of doubt.

William C. Patterson lives, teaches, and writes in northeast Kansas. The poems come from his life with his family, his life teaching literature and composition, and the daily commute between these two lives.

publication credit —

the poem (without artwork) ‘half moon’ by Caroline Skanne, appeared previously in ‘Bright Stars 5: An Organic Tanka Anthology’ edited by M. Kei, Keibooks