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Alan Peat

My dear time’s waste

Some days I find myself back at William Duffy’s farm; sat on a rocking chair alongside a man in a hammock. Long crowded in by so many words we’re both given to silence. I’m thinking maybe I should write about this place so, for a clearer view, I clamber up on James Wright’s shoulders. The bronze butterflies are swirling all around me; a chicken hawk floats by. And quite suddenly it strikes me that I’ve always been standing on someone’s shoulders, so I look down and there, under both of us, is René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke. And there’s nothing, absolutely nothing that I’d change.

Lesbia's sparrow
sat in the garden
reading a book

Note: The title is taken from Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 30.”


About the Author

Alan Peat

Alan Peat, UK-based poet and author, won a 2022 Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun. He was also runner-up in the 2021 British Haiku Society’s Ken and Norah Jones Haibun Award. His book of collaborative ekphrastic haibun with Réka Nytrai, Barking at the Coming Rain (Alba Publishing, 2023) is available on www.amazon.co.uk or by e-mailing alanpeat@icloud.com.


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