leaves like love let go

spiral down to snoozing earth,

dark, russet-brown loam.

*

when fall took those leaves

love became a lonely land—

warmth withdrawn, wan sun’s

*

waning light bled slow

blind trails of mud and sodden

footsteps veined with ice

*

where ghosts shadowed past,

skulked all through that leafless land

to haunt our autumns…

*

stark, unfelled, strange-boughed—

love’s remains in lonely land:

bare old beeches, clumped,

*

storm-ridden and gaunt,

sheltering our homeless hearts,

winterblown—like us,

*

love’s a vagabond

wandering to a nameless place

of endless leaving—

*

on tracks untravelled

from fall to spring, we will see

leaves, let go, return.

___________________________________________________________________________________

 – I originally wrote this haiku chain on Twitter — a bad habit of mine — poetry on Twitter being so hit and miss, nobody’s looking for it — but I find it a good place maybe for knocking out a first draft.

– When I’d written it I thought Love is a lonely land was a new phrase but then I checked and I saw I had actually lifted it (subconsciously…) from an old, sweet song.

–  This was Billie Holiday’s beautiful, mournful Deep Song (by Cory and Cross), which includes the line:

Love lives in a lonely land

and ends:

Love is a barren land, a lonely land/A lonely land.

–  That’s a song I must have listened to more than a couple dozen times since childhood (my parents also loved Billie Holiday).

– At any rate, my haiku chain has ended up as a sort of retort — a positive echo if you like — to the somewhat bleak sentiments of Deep Song…

– So thanks to Billie, Cory and Cross!

– And here’s their song in all its glory:

Billie Holiday: Deep Song