A Bright Balance of Feathers: Paperback Edition

 

My author copies have arrived! It’s always exciting to open a parcel and find a new book. I’m so pleased to have released this new edition of ‘A Bright Balance of Feathers’ in paperback form. It has a matt cover featuring one of my photos of a robin taken at Ham Wall Nature Reserve on the Somerset Levels and it’s light enough to take on a walk with enough space around the poems for you to write your own nature haiku and notes.

Find it for sale here on Amazon: A Bright Balance of Feathers: Bird Haiku: Amazon.co.uk: Herlihy, P L: 9798386790400: Books

 

Buzzards in a Valley on Dartmoor

 

It hunts the tree line
Below me, a wingspan away
Hunter seeks its prey

 

Brown feathers reach out
Ruffling in the air. Eyes down!
Birdseye view below

 

You follow the wind
Catching it close in your heart
Soaring with its song

Blackcap and the pirate rooks

These two haiku are from one walk around the local area:

Blackcap

 In the hedgerow hops
Among thorned berries, blackcap
Autumn hat adorned

The Pirate Rooks

Above the grey stone
Roof they fly; flock of black wings
And pirate bones. Arrrrh!

Autumn Rooks, Long-tailed Tits and a White Swan

 

Rooks in a red field

Shaved of its corn. Forage! Fight!

Beaks glean Autumn light

 

Late evening calls, hark!

The long-tailed tits sing and flit

In warm company

 

White swan in the rhyne

Wings against a white skyline

Singing the old songs

Barn Swallows near Glastonbury Tor

A sight for sore eyes

No wing more uplifting than

Summer’s first swallow

Crow Tree Picnic

 

In a circle, eyes

Watching our every mouthful

Crows, crumbs, closer, caw…

 

Hoodwinked and wary

The Family gathers

Extorting their dues

Crows, The Nothe, Weymouth

Great Crested Grebe Fishing

 

 

Diving! Breakneck speed
A bronze tipped arrow streaks past
Silver bubbles rise

Radipole Lake, Weymouth