Spangled Seasons
Under hazed New York
spheres, spring sousing Riverside, earlier
cocooned in the Moor shedding off
mover’s trip, bundled molehills against
walls –once sparks we strung
onto a nebulae over
nights on Federal Hill—you and
I trudge on.
Trails we looped
between Chesapeake,
Susquehanna and
the Hudson, Venus sputtering
on Pennsylvania woods these,
too, we tucked abreast in
memory, if Manhattan
spares us.
Our cherry
noon-s have leaped into infinity
from finiteness; as well warbled
peace from cypress groves at
Inner Harbor, dandelions mirroring
our masquerade, a yucca spurting
by the window squirrels flying
a trapeze on pines mocked,
ends of days orioles
griped about—we plucked to
spangle our seasons. Soon mere
revenant: Baltimore winters we
skidded, wincing but
un-bruised. I posed for you
that summer cicadas plunged
into passion deaths, smearing
wind shields Fells Point’s
mists we eluded fogged.
Tall suns now spear
mornings at the Moor, we flex
our years on West Broadway: summers
on a mountain lake maybe, a bowery at
Brooklyn Gardens in the fall, sunset
behind Grant’s tomb perhaps, or by
Shakespeare’s lagoon, divining
on its surface the play
of wind on our
dreams
Poet of the Week, Poetry Super Highway, Nov. 1-7, 2010
Mirage
Shredded blooms,
hair parted in the wind,
the pavement wavering—
my cane unwilling
to step with me.
Light shimmers ahead
I swear I am on solid land.
But the air has turned into water
and I suddenly shed tears—
but I’m not crying.
The girl behind me
races a breeze and she stumbles.
My cane falls but I remain
suspended between air
and water uncertain—
I think I’m flying,
flying with the sparrows:
could they be lost?
Or falling wingless like the moths
from a pink tree.
Oh, my cane tiptoes
back to me winged, its crook a hand,
growing fingers, prodding me
to rise. I rise, stilled
between white air and water
—the ground at least, has
ceased spinning.
by Alegria Imperial (Canada)
Honorable Mention
Passager Poetry Contest, 2007
also featured at Charlotte diGregorio’s blog for writers
“we do not bleed like nightingales when felled singing”
(four of thirty-one one-line poems in my recently published book, “we do not bleed like nightingales when felled singing” at bonesjournal.com books)
a drizzle tinkling in parched pools
the wind-shaken birch piping old pains too late to replace
a cypress hedge nursing hoarseness since long ago
when the waning moon a pregnant sea receding in the swell
a beggar’s prayer
in the name of God who offers love,
who lets wings soar for free
like a sparrow i pray
i beg not for bread
for my spirit has no use
for crumbs that turn dust
in my quarantined existence
i beg not for words if thrown
like refuse—what seed
if it were stone could grow
on a mulch bed?
but I beg for eyes that open skies
hooded by grease,
a warm brew to douse my morning
to wash off the grit of my waking
i beg for arms the size
a home calls a hug a grip
to break the iceberg calloused
eyes have encased me
i ginger step to beg for a smile
on the slopes of indifference
where cheeks wall me in
to the emptiness
i beg for an answer to my prayer
the way God cups a broken sparrow
the way He lets a spirit soar
without begging
Sketchbook, ‘Let Us Pray’, 5–5 Sept-Oct 2011
the day lily (parallel)
we wonder about paradise
waiting for sunset
as if a beggar
the day lily
from far away
a whimper
Sonic Boom issue eleven 2018 (parallel)
denouement (a sequence)
salt wind
soughing
in an empty shell
wave splatter
the sting of her tears
a gull’s cry
knee deep
in foam
her tipped toes
lingering on the tide- line
moonlight
splinters
her argument
as in the afterlife
crusting on sand bars
contrary to guidelines
a sliver of her flesh
shivers
in the gloaming
a curdled refuse
bones: journal of contemporary haiku, March 2018
a sky I can’t find
my eyes on foliage-d sky withering at zenith
river-crossing a breeze wipes off my fate line
mom’s nestled cheek in a boy’s breast my lover’s roost
a fissured boulder at sunset could be me
night’s gritty breath a sky I can’t find
one-line haiku Under the Basho 2018
Heartbroken
A heartbreak is contagious. Been sleepless at its onset since I received this news in my mail as John Martone’s (Santoka) response to my Nov 15 submission for otata’s #49 issue:
“Dear Friends,
At the end of this month, otata will publish ebooks from David Miller and Romano Zeraschi. Suffering from an onset of heartbreak, otata will be unable to issue her 48th number. She extends her regrets to all who have contributed over the past four years. The email account will go on hiatus as well. In the spirit of Santoka’s last verse, please check the website in the future, in the (perhaps unlikely) event of a return.” — JM
I am really heartbroken having found in John’s “otata” my dream of a poetry journal. My first appearance in June of 2016 started a monthly run until last month with #48 October 2019. Two highlights kept me going though each submission just bounced me higher and higher—these two were both published for Christmas: “post perspective (on that night)” in #26, February 2018 and “reconfiguring if that night will come again” in #36 December 2018.
The first gained me this pennant:
Alegria,
It’s a masterwork.
The most splendid piece in 24 issues.
— John
https://jornales.wordpress.com/…/post-perspectives-on-that…/
The second this thrilling note:
You again?
You again!
(How otherwise?)
The Christmas poem reminds me of Dylan Thomas.
John
https://jornales.wordpress.com/…/reconfiguring-if-that…/xxxx
and a third:
Dear Imperial Joy,
This morning you conjure Dan Raphael but are a species all your own. I especially love that eel, that sky, that whale; the archaic imponderables of the second poem.
You are not losing your grip, you’re freeing the world.
#31, August 27, 2018
John
To Mary Margaret, “nothing but fine rain” (reflection on an ‘angel’s passing’)
It must be the constant grey sky, the moist air, the tearful silence of still leaves, and the passing away of a niece, Mary Margaret, at 29 years old, invalid most of her growing up years from an undetected source of her seizures–an angel to us all–that midly paralyzed me with a meltdown. Being old, I saw through my life as in a screen: what did really matter and what matters most. I believe she had the perfect answer with her illness having shorn her of the false sun sparks that I could be guilty of racing to catch. The weeks following her death lead me to an overdue clarity of the truths I failed to recognize, hence, left untended. I hope that with my thinning bones, I could still carry a metaphorical watering can to bring them back to life. Would that these three haiku were enough for now…
fall twilight
on her grave nothing
but fine rain
***
on her tomb
tiny hands sweep
leavings of sparrows
***
candle drippings
on her epitaph-
a broken word
summaries (a sequence)
earth’s raiment showing
legs
if coquetry
a verb dandelion fur
thigh-high mist the graveyard sea wind-lisps
vexed with what to wed
air
brain murmur definitely scarred
denied
the monkey tree’s appeals
page 10
in a hyena’s lock jaw all the why’s
page 11
shattered ear possibly the gist of all paralysis
page 12
bones #18 November 15, 2019 (a journal of contemporary haiku)
About
autumn wind
wondering about lilies
in a mountain pond
Tell me a writer who really gets a satisfying jornal, in Spanish a daily wage or its equivalent, and I’ll bare a spirit in constant bouts of doubtfulness. Does a writer earn more because of what he writes and how he does it? Or is a writer paid more or less because of who he is? Is it money or honor he expects to receive?
Ahhh … but money as wage, and praise or honor as reward would be too predictable, too common as Job lamented in the Book of Job. It is in these lines that read: “Is not man’s life on earth nothing more than pressed service, his times no better than hired drudgery? Like the slave, sighing for the shade, or the workman with no thought but his wages, months of delusion I have assigned to me, nothing for my own but nights of grief. Lying in bed I wonder, ‘When will it be day?’ Risen I think, ‘How slowly evening comes!’
Restlessly I fret till twilight falls. Swifter than a weaver’s shuttle my days have passed, and vanished, leaving no hope behind. Remember that my life is but a breath, and that my eyes will never again see joy.”
Not money but joy is the ultimate wage as the passage implies. And joy is not hard to earn for it is in everyday life if we have eyes to see, a nose to smell, fingers to touch, ears to hear–a heart beating. This to me, is how a writer earns a daily wage. His wages then take the guise of treasures his heart can transfigure into a universe of thought that taps into other hearts, that causes a swirl in the depth of other souls, or that makes wings to sprout on leaden heels.
Sometimes not joy but rueful, poignant moments are my pick. Take what I earned once: On my walk home in my neighborhood, I caught two clumps of snowdrops–such tiny blossoms smaller than fingertips that do not look up but shyly droop close to black patches on the ground winter has frozen. That afternoon in the frosty wind, they trembled as if ready to turn away and run but how could they? For that poignant moment on seeing the wintry rain beat on the fragile snowdrop–as if pushing it to go home now, go to sleep–I earned my jornal, my daily wage.
Once on summer walk, the crackle of dried leaves just hit me both like the laughter of children and sobs long suppressed. Neither one of them would resolve the dryness, but I recalled how each does bring tears: laughter for joy, sobs for healing that comes with the release of a dammed-up pain. My jornal that day came as two haiku.
Fall has since shortened the day and the heart begins to crave for lost space that it doesn’t even recall which or where. I feel that most treasures have turned into mush so much so I wouldn’t be able to sift them off the ground. Yet I caught the dying day yesterday–so glorious in the gold of autumn it opened a flip side of serene heaven. Blades of grass coated in diadems of rain that carpet the lawns render royal walks poor by imitation. A burst of red maple against an inky blue sky humbled me, a soul bragging about her skill to recreate beauty in words.
I suppose I’m taking Job’s reflections to heart. I’d rather not gloss over each day and look beyond what’s there, right before me, or else fragile as is my breath one day “my eyes may never again see joy” to write. With what then will I compare the eternal joy, the ultimate wage I await?
Yet for now, as other eyes hanker to make the invisible visible, I put a tag on some moments of joy. Like on seeing the snowdrops, I paid myself $200 as my jornal.
What could have been yours?
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