Much to my amazement, one of a few haiku I sent for the Australian Haiku Society’s inaugural John Bird Dreaming Award for Haiku has been placed second. My thanks to the judges, Vanessa Proctor and Michael Dylan Welch, and to Ron Moss for his haiga.
Responses
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Well deserved too Paul. Many a times I have sat by a slowly moving river listening to the bees buzz around the comfrey – time slows – marked only by a falling leaf – a heartbeat.
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Thanks, Clive.
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Congratulations! This is a lovely haiku – and the commentaries given by the judges are very insightful too. I enjoyed reading them alongside the haiku. Comfrey sometimes makes it’s way into my rather unruly garden and I dig it up. Maybe I won’t this year!
Well done again.
Julie x-
Thanks, Julie. I’m rather fond of comfrey – the word as much as the plant and its flowers and leaves.
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Comfrey – yes it has a pleasant sound to it. Useful too – I used to make a balm or poultice with the roots and pulped willow bark to take the pain out of bruised and laminitic hooves, in horses. Which has nothing to do with poetry of course but harks back to the slower pace of life in the country.
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Yes. Richard Mabey, in Flora Britannica (1996, p.307), says this: “Comfrey (probably a corruption of nhe Latin ‘conferva’, a healing waterplant mentioned by Pliny, whose name is related to the verb confervere, to grow together) contains a substance called allantoin, which promotes healing in connective tissue. The medieval herbalists knew the plant as ‘bone-set’, and the root was lifted in spring, grated and used much as plaster of Paris is today.”
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Those old herbalists often knew a thing or two 😊
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Lovely, Matthew. And as Julie Mellor says, great comments from the judges, which have helped me further in understanding the haiku form.
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Thank you, Lizzie.
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Congratulations Paul, loved the haiku.
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Thanks, Madhuri. All the best, Matthew
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Matthew Paul: Poetry & Stuff 
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