Keith Evetts
Air Miles
Glorious day here … so glorious, I am not going to the gym but instead picking blackberries along the back lane to go with cookers from our old apple tree. A month early. I have apple crumble mix cooling in the fridge, while my wife has roasted some fancy beetroot from our daughter’s allotment, with thyme from the garden. A flavoursome glass of Tuscan vermentino and leftovers of yesterday evening’s pesto chicken, with marinated mushrooms, suffices for a late lunch.
From the shade of the garden umbrella I can see bamboos and wisteria from China, the latter in its second blooming of the year; anemones and star jasmine from Japan; hesperantha and red-hot pokers from the high veldt; aloes from the Drakensberg, ferns from New Zealand, Far East Asia, Brazil, Canada … palms from the Mediterranean, the Caribbean and China; flaxes, cordylines, and astelias from the Antipodes; aeoniums from the Canaries, American northern oats and California poppies, and a Nootka cypress from the tundra.
Above, in the cloudless sky, from time to time there is a passing jet carrying vacationers from one teeming airport to another, whence transport with luggage to a resort hotel. Now long retired in a village by the Thames after working in different countries for twenty of our adult years, people ask when we last had a holiday…
tourist gift shop
a plastic miniature
of Rodin's thinker
About the Author
Retired British diplomat Keith Evetts inter alia is managing editor of The Haiku Foundation’s haiku commentary feature, an admin of Facebook’s largest haiku group, and one of the editors of the annual Red Moon Anthology of haiku.
A delightfully sensuous haibun that might make a few readers think twice about holidaying abroad in future (apart from those of us who live in Ireland, of course! 😄)
Thank you, Marion. I also have cherished memories from past travels, from which the monotonous bits have been erased along with the humidity, rain, miles of bush, and mosquitos!
Always enjoyed my visits to Ireland…