Diana Webb

Constable’s Attempt to Bring the Heavens Down to Earth

You should have issued each of us one of these, Miss Farquarson. A postcard of a pane of sky. You should have asked us, ‘What exactly constitutes such swathes of cloud?’ (‘Silk-sack,’ the poet Hopkins called them.)

You should have asked us, ‘What went into that vial of liquid blue to catch at least three shades of background to the cumulus swirled into relief?’

You would have saved yourself a lot of grief from bored schoolchildren kicking at the wood behind those benches in the lab where only a bad egg smell or a bunsen burner out of control could spark a glint.

Where are you now, Miss Farquarson? Up there with those two small blobs of pink like flying pigs? 

Wherever you are I send you now this postcard through the ether. 

stipple of paint
                    the counterbalance of
                                                       a droplet

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About the Author

Diana Webb edits the Time Haiku journal and runs a haiku group in Leatherhead, Surrey, England, where she lives. She enjoys running haibun workshops.