in the rain-haiku
It rained a bit today, fine like baby’s hair unlike the whoosh of sudden rain I got soaked in one afternoon at the Van Dusen gardens. For that memory and this haiku, I add another $500 for my ‘jornal’.
a sudden rain–
children run for shade
under the weeping spruce
white moon-haiku
When a haiku moment sparks, I must be awake. I’m glad I was when it flashed just now. This must have come from a memory; it could have happened during one of my daily walks–a moment that did not mean anything then, until it was distilled as this haiku. Precious as it is, I must give myself another $500 as ‘jornal’. I hope you agree with me.
white moon
over the crown of maples
his face when I left
haiku
It’s been a long time since I earned a ‘jornal’. For this first haiku moment in weeks I give myself $500 because of its element of surprise. It swept me on my quite walk this afternoon at Fraser River Park close to where I live. I hope you agree with me.
sudden snowstorm
on a late spring walk–
but cottonwood blooms
ILUKO HAIKU
How much can I possibly give my own self a jornal for this priceless rediscovery of the dialect–one of 87 but among the five major dialects in the Philippines–I was born with it but lost from lack of usage when I was in my teens? Nobody can imagine my endless exhilaration everytime a poem leaps off my breast: the sound of each word, the image it conjures, the spirit around which an old or new world unravels are beyond … words. It’s priceless! If you could, this time, would you please pay me a jornal for it?
1.
batbato inta
kapanagan
sabsabong ti sardam
stones
on the riverbank
dawn flowers
2.
daluyon iti
tengga’t aldaw
arasaas mo
billows
at high tide
your whispers
3.
bulan nga
agpadaya
nagpakada kadi?
setting moon
in the east
did you say goodbye?
4.
inururot
a pagay
tedted ti lulua
pulled strands
of rice grain
tear drops
5.
dagiti bulbulong
nga agtataray
lenned diay laud
rustle
of leaves
sun set
Alegria Imperial at LYNX XXIV 1 February 2009 /also PoemShape/and bilingual pen/and iluko.com
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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