day after Christmas/on frosted peaks
1.
day after Christmas–
crows waddling to bus stop
no one awaits
2.
on frosted peaks
somehow
a glow in the winter sky
in the stable/the magi
The three Magi before Herod, France, early 15th century. Stained glass: colored glass, grisaille; lead. Restored by F. Pivet, 1999. Artist unknown. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
in the stable
the donkey brays
at knowing magi
a magus’ myrrh
its almost fragrance
only for the babe
conversations–
the magi, the Star
a sleeping babe
the magi
scattered on sand–
mere shadows
among sand dunes
the magi
still counting stars
Suppositions (One Shot Wednesday)
I gape at turtles dip legs
in a pool the sun
just now deserted.
Tipping on rock
I sway on a shell of suppositions
whether
or not water not light
whets the eyes, whether or not to sip
not to see fills cavities of
empty cages, gaping hearts
that sullen suns disabled
when deserting lovers
dredged the pool
of its clarity and water ebbed
on man-made rocks
where I now teeter, nudging
turtles on rock-edge, my legs dipped
but short on water, my toes
a ginger-spread
stalking my origins
elsewhere.
I mind the rain drowning
in pools or falling on ginger roots–
soon juiced for life—
but I don’t mind it falling
on crackling fire where
raindrops sizzle, the sound of
dying doused,
which props me up still balancing
on turtle back
eternal suppositions
that stilled the pool where I
have gelled.
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry blog. Join me and other poets who write verses for love, read those of others, leave a word of encouragement and/or insight with the same love and respect. Post your piece on your blog and sign up in the Mr. Linky list.
a city asleep (for One Shoot Sunday)
Fifth Avenue
tonight breathes
on its own–
dreaming of tin stars
pulsing on its breast
the drummer boys
march to the silence
to a city veiled
in plumes of heaven–
not from gutters for once
the day’s cacophony
drowns in the quiet
steps both furred and steeled
jangles of gears and iron
grating in its belly
only the soughing song
of an empty shell
rises floats on invisible lights
those piercing slants
from tips that hold up the sky
in unison tin soldiers
rhyme the even sigh of sleep–
no siren screaming
screeches to halt the drumming
the shimmering of stars
Posted for One Shoot Sunday from a photo of Rockefeller Center on Fifth Avenue on Christmas by Adam Dustus. Join other poets at One Stop Poetry blog who write verses for love, read those of others, leave a word of encouragement and/or insight with the same love and respect. Post your piece on your blog and sign up in the Mr. Linky list.
last ornament (Christmas eve)
last ornament
on the Tree, a crane origami–
Christmas eve
A rewrite from original haiku posted in Margaret Dornaus’ blog, haikudoodle under the topic “trimming the tree”.
trimming the tree/winter full moon
1.
trimming the tree–
a cat’s frame
not a star
2.
winter full moon—
the missing napkin ring
beside the Star
–haiku for jornales friends with my wishes for the most of yours during this Christmas season and the new Year!
The lunar eclipse saluted us first, extravagantly, too, and the winter full moon sails on into our wishes among the constellations, sometimes witnessing for us who cannot see stars skidding through Light Years that will never be visible in our time. The secret in our lives is the moment, the moment lived whether fully or not, aware or not.
The moment I just learned on reading an issue of Poetry (December 2006) is thus the essence of all art. Art must not only capture it but live it for us the way we actually do but can’t fathom–in the hugeness of the universe and Time–until an artist does it for us.
You and I, newbie or master, implanted with the seed to let art blossom must take command–do we have a choice? You and I know we don’t have as it has taken over our souls, the deepset recesses of our being even, as I know from lines you generously leave here. Thank you–if I could but reinvent the word!
last winter in fornt of a dressed-up Vancouver Art Gallery when snow defaulted on Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympics
Masquerade (for one shot Wednesday)
On stubbly grass unthinking on my heels, I crush a pair
of yellow dots here on a nameless hill-rise where
spark these fallen stars—
perhaps?
Thumb-sized faces, touching shyness, such subterfuge for such
malicious growth: these weeds whose birth in helium
augur choking death to promises of
rose-lipped tulips and such
or nodding daffodils and flare-collared narcissus. But my pupils
to its petals the dandelion-look cannot but inveigle, openness
its sheath of innocence so unlike
the earnestness
ivy creepers throttle a birch or the blatant avarice a herd of agile paws
and furry tails sidestep my indifference, trembling to un-husk
a single nut, pointed jaws nibbling time—no
pretenses there. Masquerades
I would rather find, disguises to my own guises—the sun-gazing
adoring face-thrusting-trust dandelions pose on a universe
of pupils, mine for one but not mine, whose malevolent
leaps spring from
fear. I, who face no fear of thwarted rebirths from tumescent bulbs
or such other spurts of life I could cause, see no power in these
weeds I now half bend to gaze at as if loving them
flowering, relishing
the sound of their name. These weeds, are they perhaps a kin
to Leo, the constellation the overbearing sun
rules? Could they be remnants of colliding
stars, battling their way
as if certain a center lay in the black void and bursting, littered
a blue dot where on patches, this hill-rise for one, struck
a bed for them to mutate and transmogrify? If
they were
I need not wonder then why they deserve such spite—rolling as
weeds these minute suns in masquerade, I know as
I know what I am.
I am posting this poem for One Shot Wednesday at the One Stop Poetry blog.
Join us – throw in your verses. Here are the rules (taken directly off their blog):
1. Write a poetic piece & post it on your blog
2. Then let us know about your post. Link back to One Shot
3. Sign up in the Mr Linky list, linking directly to your post, AFTER you’ve posted it.
4. Go visit others who have signed up! Offer support & encouragement. Share your love of words and insight respectfully. Please try to visit as many participating poets as you can. We all could use and appreciate kind feedback.
Lullaby (yet another lyric poem from haiku-strays)
I wrote this poem on one of the early days when obsessed with learning haiku, the form seemed to shape my brain–wherever that part is where words run into lines. This thought, this memory sparked after I wrote a personal essay that I submitted to Passager about my grandmother’s bath-hair washing ritual (“Digos: a ritual” also posted at my other blog, http://filipineses09.wordpress.com). The rhythm apparently timed in with my measured strides during my daily walk at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore where I lived then. Water, birds: seagulls, ducks, robins, ravens, orioles, sparrows; trees: conifers, chestnuts, magnolias; weeds: dandelions, clover, jewel weeds co-inhabited the dome–a span of sky. I walked daily toward dusk, which is why perhaps this poem—or haiku that strayed—is a lullaby.
grandma on a swing
flying on a lullaby–
a smile thin as breath
combing her hair, my fingers
the teeth untangling silk knots–
her tiara
cheeks I kiss–once
a cushion of veined organza
now loose ripples
Paloma, she warbles–
a dove, my name, alights
on her lips, flapping wings
moons chasing suns
sprout wings–in the darkness
whispers grow eyes
in her flight
girl in Sunday dress
girl in Sunday dress
in her father’s shadow—
lost too soon
Escape (for one shoot Sunday)
"The Arrow Shot" a photomanipulation by Claudio Mufarrege
She leans on her toes, picks up lead
in the light, streaks in the wind
—gold melts into indigo on her feet.
Shredded knits soaked in dregs becomes
her, a princess biting at grit, thrusting
her feet into the roar, a moment
to dread yet to want to slip in, a
gaping so inviting—the tunnel’s mouth
slurping the sky—but she turns back
drawing tight like a lover her shadow
and flits toward the light.
I posted this poem for One Shoot Sunday at the One Stop Poetry blog.
Join us – throw in your verses. Here are the rules (taken directly off their blog):
1. Write a poetic piece & post it on your blog
2. Then let us know about your post. Link back to One Shot
3. Sign up in the Mr Linky list, linking directly to your post, AFTER you’ve posted it.
4. Go visit others who have signed up! Offer support & encouragement. Share your love of words and insight respectfully. Please try to visit as many participating poets as you can. We all could use and appreciate kind feedback.
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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