Monday 28 November 2022
Torakina Park, Brunswick Heads, NSW
Tricky weather and various personal issues among our members pushed the spring ginko into the very last few days of the season. This time the sun shone, and though we numbered only five, it was a gratifying event.
The chosen site was Torakina Park at Brunswick Heads. It was here that our ‘guru’ John Bird gathered together poets from the area in December 2005, and Cloudcatchers was formed. It is here that John’s ashes were scattered earlier this year. Though we numbered only five on this occasion, three of us have been meeting since that first ginko.
The focus was on the senses, and poets were asked to bring with them up to three haiku in each category of the four senses other than sight! Most of us managed to do this, and realised in the process how often we bypass images that are there before us, but overshadowed by our ever-ready response to the sense of sight.
It was a Monday and school was back, so the beach was scattered with abundant young mothers with toddlers, and little ones at the breast, suckling, as the wavelets broke along the shoreline. There were young dads too, so enthusiastic, capable and caring of their little ones, while the mums chatted among themselves.
Little naked bodies delighted in chasing the abundant brush turkeys, which might jump up into a vacant pram to investigate, or disappear into the scrub to scratch loudly in the undergrowth. But we did remember to enjoy the sound of those breaking waves, the cry of fear from a child being inspected by a turkey, to feel the sand run though our fingers, that salty scent of the sea, the woody smell of the littoral forest, and the tang of cashew nuts as we read our first drafts around the picnic table.
We shared lunch at ‘The Bruns’ … and went off home to craft our haiku, ready for the current Round Robin.
Australian Haiku Society 