Weekly Writing Challenge: Haiku Catchoo, Friday edition

Thanksgiving has been celebrated.  The signs point straight to Christmas.  It’s the most wonderful time of the year. 

Here are my last three haiku for the weekly challenge.  Below the picture is a 100-word story I did in haiku.

Air like brittle ice
Searing lungs and exposed face
Summer dreams haunt me

Chattering birds roost
Atop a tall still-green bush
Avian Starbucks

Lights appear on trees
The joy of wrapping presents
Countdown to Christ-mas

As a Christmas present, here’s a 100-word haiku I did over a year ago in a Friday Fictioneers response to a photo prompt of a shrine at the top of a hill. The original post is here:  https://sustainabilitea.wordpress.com/2012/09/27/friday-fictioneers-the-journey/.

The Journey
Life in eight haiku

Young and filled with hope
Gentle smooth wide path beckons
Birds singing in trees

Walking together
Joyful talk with much laughter
Sturdy trees grow close

Dangerous trail now
So slippery and narrow
Easy to plunge off

When I trip or fall
Your hands help me rise again
Sun’s rays warm us both

Dark verdant foliage
Tempting us to turn aside
Onto wayward path

Weary from our walk
Searching for flowered meadow
Welcome refreshment

Dark clouds overhead
Continuing side by side
Weathering the storms

Long journey ending
We reach the top together
Home awaits us there

Phoneography Challenge: Black and White…Ocean morning

There’s something hypnotic about the sounds of the endless waves, breaking and returning, breaking and returning.  The fog mutes and distorts the sounds, wrapping me in a damp coat of solitary silence.  Sunshine is turned into the silver of scattered diamonds on the water. A host of footprints marks the empty beach, perhaps the imprints of all who’ve ever walked here before.

The seagull soars silently past and I whirl, trying to catch him (or her; who knows?) in my lens.  Later, when I look, he appears to be balancing on the tip of one wing.  We were all in balance that morning, the seagull, nature and I.

Ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time.
~H. P. Lovecraft

Roll on, deep and dark blue ocean, roll. Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain. Man marks the earth with ruin, but his control stops with the shore.
~Lord Byron

Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.
~Ryunosuke Satoro

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Phoneography Challenge of “Black and White”.  If you take photos with a Smartphone or iThingy, feel free to join in. The black and white in the photo is natural and I’ve done no editing.