Photo: Moyan Brenn/Creative Commons/Flickr

Two haiku by Lee Nash wear tight jeans and grandmother’s shawl in today’s feature of the International Women’s Haiku Festival.

under the folds
of my grandmother’s shawl
Northern Lights

I love the image of a grandchild, whether still young or grown up, burrowed beneath her grandmother’s crocheted or knitted shawl.  The child sees light – maybe even the light of a fire in the fireplace – refracted through the natural holes in the yarn’s colorful weave, thus her own personal Northern Lights display in the warmth and safety of the little world her grandmother created.  Such coziness across the generations.

***

bumble bee
in a flower tube
my jeans feel tight

The quirky image of a bumble bee trapped in a flower tube gives the familiar image of tight jeans an offbeat twist.  Nash puts herself into the poem with the first person possessive pronoun “my,” giving us the sense that she’s talking right to us, just as a girlfriend would after an ice cream binge.

Lee Nash lives in France and freelances as an editor and proofreader.  Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in print and online journals in the UK, the US, and France, including Ambit; Angle; Ink, Sweat and Tears; Mezzo Cammin; Orbis; Poetry Salzburg Review; Sentinel Literary Quarterly; The French Literary Review; The Interpreter’s House; The Lake; and World Haiku Review. You can find a selection of Lee’s poems on her website: leenashpoetry.com.

Find more information about the International Women’s Haiku Festival and submit your work at this link.