Frank Tassone’s haikai challenge this week is to write a tribute haiku to one of the late Rachel Sutcliffe’s poems. Rachel lived a few miles from the small town where I grew up in Yorkshire, and her haiku are unfailingly the best I have ever read. The haiku I have chosen (difficult choice) is this one, first published in Cattails in September 2014.

autumn stroll
we pick blackberries
out of the mist

It inspired a trio.

this hedge strung

with webs of spider mist

and purple berries

beneath the dew

grass blades bend quivering

with diamonds

empty walnut shell

rose hip nibbled cast away

squirrel litter