The Uncarved Blog

Egrets in Morning Light by Australian artist Gareth Jones–Roberts*

Translated

on the edge of space
two egrets in morning light
woken from a dream

—haiku by Ken Chawkin
Spring, 2001, Melbourne, Australia

*Photo of painting used by permission from the artist (1935–2013)
(Click painting to enlarge it.)

During a 3-month stay in Melbourne, Australia, I was fortunate to have met the artist through a mutual friend, his physician, and mine at the time, Dr. Graham Brown. Gareth’s painting was hanging on Graham’s office wall. I asked him who the artist was and he told me it was one of his patients. He gave it to him in exchange for learning Transcendental Meditation. Graham was also a TM Teacher. I was so taken by the painting that I wrote this haiku and shared it with him. One day, Graham asked me if I would like to come along to visit Gareth and share the haiku with him. I jumped at the chance and met Gareth, his wife and their son. Lovely people! He showed me around his studio and I shared the haiku with him. He liked it very much. I shared more poems with him. We hit it off and we stayed in touch over the years. He was a special soul!

This poem was published in two poetry books: The Dryland Fish, An Anthology of Contemporary Iowa Poets (2003), contained in 13 Ways to Write Haiku: A Poet’s Dozen; and in This Enduring Gift — A Flowering of Fairfield Poetry (2010), included in Five Haiku.

Tags: Australian artist, egrets, Gareth Jones-Roberts, haiku, Ken Chawkin, nature, painting

This entry was posted on October 10, 2009 at 11:16 am and is filed under My poems, Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.