Poetry preparation and my first Haiku

We are well underway in our preparation for NaPoWriMo 2015.  Linda, who is now a seasoned participant, has challenged me to write some poetry.  This is a first for me.  I remember reading Under Milk Wood at school but poetry didn't seem to feature on the English syallbus that I studied.  Seems strange since I was at school with Carol Ann Duffy and we shared the same inspirational English teacher.  June Scriven was a breathe of fresh air and changed the books that were chosen for the English O'Level course, causing quite a stir at the time. 

June was engaged by my parents to give extra tuition and with a lot of patience on her part and the use of the study aids for the literature books that we studied, I manage to achieve a pass.  My mum was very much in awe of June and I remember the 30 mins before she arrived,  the setting of the tea tray with the special starched hand embroidered cloth, tea pot, best tea service and biscuits that only June was allowed to eat.  My mum was a frustrated educationalist who had left school at 14 to go straight into work.  Looking back I am sure that I was a reluctant learner, especially for these extra lessons, my parents were working hard to afford the lessons and my mum would have given anything to have been taking the lessons.   Carol Ann was obviously a natural and I struggled with the subject, some would say that I still struggle with it today, but have chosen to see if I can improve as I move into my 'almost twilight years'.

This is my first attempt at a Haiku, I am very aware that this simple structure needs a lot of work but thought I would publish this one and then see if I can improve over the next few months.  I had hoped to be able to illustrate this with one of my own photographs of the Solar Eclipse, however it is very cloudy and Radio 4 has assured me that unless there is a miracle London will not be seeing the event.  Instead I have used Steve Gregory's photo taken from Bristol in 1999 which is released under the Creative Commons licence.