Haiku – Estella Lynch

Celestial Blue Haiku [Weekly Photo Challenge]

Summer Blues

Crisp Oxford, cyan

Grey March forgets your beauty

I wish for blue skies

Simple, right? A simple, sun-filled sky. Pure Blue. Pure beauty.

I could wish for riches today, good health, love of family and friends, success of seismic proportions. But today, the dull March skies overhead, an every-morning-awakening to threat of rain pellets frizzing my straightened bonnet and a daily longing for a slick shot of Vitamin D is getting me down.

Thanks to The Daily Post’s Photo Challenge for nudging me to dig into my huge catalogue of images and reflect on this week’s topic: Wish. This photo is far from a standout in my portfolio but I love its randomness and the surge of joy felt when I took it. It was snapped last August on a 7am meander in a seaside town–a cloudless morning before tourists attacked footpaths yet a healthy gaggle of smiling joggers were already enticed to join me by the promised sizzle of the day. Lovely.

The colour of this sky is blue. Bluest blue. On grungy-skied days like today, I close my eyes and wish for more days when my feet stroll paths under seabirds creating patterns against cyan. Today, summer wishes are stirring as spring begins.

Book Bound in 17 Syllables

Book Bound

Musty, old book smell

Shrapnelled, leather-bound Tolstoy

Gripped in my left hand

Is it the emotive heavy scent of yesteryear or the heaviness in hand that boosts the importance of leather-bound books when we peruse a library or open their yellowing pages?

Today’s New York Times piece about bookbinding is fascinating insight into what I had thought was a lost art but am grateful for a glimpse of what remains a thriving, daily day at the office. Stitching, slicing, pressing leafs of printed paper together where an author’s work is enshrined in one beautifully-produced tome. Book-binding–a true craft.

For writers, readers and antiquarians, the video footage in this article is worth the price of admission: