spring breeze/haze/blind alley (random haiku for the day)
spring breeze–
nothing but a touch
from a wisteria tip
haze–
when out of the bushes
a squirrel leaps
blind alley–
between your word and mine
a wrong turn
Doves (a haibun for One Shot Wednesday)
The dove pair stopped cooing today.
Last time I glimpsed them, each moved listless in the cage – tails fanning each other’s snow head, red eyes spying mine. No one could come near. Each guarded the other like furious sentries. Could they have known they made such a handsome pair?
The white pair would not leave the dovecote. I caught them glance the brown too common flock; and then they turned away, lidless red eyes back to each other.
all I can see
what I cannot see
in your eyes
The white doves were at a wedding today cooped up, as perhaps they would have wished in a bell. When the newlyweds tugged at a string, the doves fell together – confused by the crowd, helpless in the grasp of the bride and groom. When tossed up again, their wings seemed weak. For the first time, they flew away from each other each clutching at light cords hung from the ceiling of the room where a wedding party was rising to a pitch. Their webbed feet quivered uncertain of their hold, their eyes redder, blinking with fear; they trembled as if they had lost their wings.
Now the crowd worked at a game with the white pair as pawns. Whoever caught one of the pair would think it a prize. What a prize–the glee bubbled off their laughter. The crowd did not know; how could they?
riddle:
when do heartbeats rhyme
in what beat end?
In freedom, a gaping cave awaits to trap lovers or a mess of strings. For the doves, loss of the other is sorrow that stones a tiny heart.
Copyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry, the inimitable gathering place for poets and artists. Check us out.
all i can see (sequence in black and white, take off from the NaHaiWriMo facebook site)
all i can see–
black and white
in your eyes
gray–
when the sun falls
on your lies
black–
dregs settling
our arguments
white–
our window blinds
turned down
ashes
on the burner your note
in black and white
Copyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
(take off from Melissa Allen’s prompt, black and white, at the still-on NaHaiWriMo facebook site)
me to Shiki:/how far can i go/with haiku? (and his possible answers)
heron at lake courtesy of wikicommons
me to Shiki:
how far can i go
with haiku?
(his possible answers)
heron equals being still
***
stillness–
we break the rules
***
not a stir in the pond–
turtle
***
cherry blossoms–
what’s wrong with fruits?
***
plum tree
only when it blooms
***
the jade Buddha laughs
long after sunset
***
wind to bamboo:
how far
can whispers go?
Shuffled seasons (for One Shoot Sunday)
photo prompt by Greg Laychak
The narrow aisle flows a river to a wall
Of white thought
What squares of light have no glow
On the surface of water?
Who spawns the flat bed of dreams my steps
Struggle to cover?
Imprisoned by air I breathe a stale paradise
Of jasmine blossoms
I hear the rain a hissing of limbs on trees
But the moon does not rise
Day ends at my door night turns the stars
Upside down
‘”Where is your walker?” “Excuse moi?” What tongue
Speaks in this land?
“You cannot leave without it?” “Why, who’s heading out?”
The grubs I picked wriggle
In my closed fist I am growing a butterfly
No one knows
In my bareness I feel drenched in dew my bones
Misaligned rattle
“Now let’s go back in.” “Who has left her?”
No one comes today
I draw a caul on the day withdraw into night
Retrieve what’s lost
The sign posts melt on the flowing river
My hair long undone
I shuffle the seasons: in my eyes autumn leaves fall
But cherry blossoms
Oh, he rises to me my cane I draw my arms a lover
Now my wings
Copyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
Written with an image prompt by Greg Laychak for One Shoot Sunday at One Stop Poetry, winner of the 2011 Shorty Award for the Arts, the inimitable gathering place for poets and artists. Share with us as we do ours your art or poetry and your thoughts. Check us out.
soil in Golgotha (my Good Friday haiku posted at NaHaiWriMo wall)
soil in Golgotha
only crosses bear fruit
here
(my Good Friday haiku posted at the still-on NaHaiWrimo facebook wall written for the prompt, dirt/soil)
believing/faces i miss (haiku on NaHaiWriMo facebook wall)
believing
we’re walled in–
my goldfish and i
faces i miss–
some rain-washed stones
on neighbor’s wall
(re-worked haiku I posted on the still-on NaHaiWriMo facebook wall from a prompt by my friend, Melissa Allen: walls)
absolved (for One Shot Wednesday)
swallows burst into our crude mornings
their flight staggering on false winds
we gaze aghast
this fractured air birthed on false moonlight
unpredicted
our beggar voice fades into whimpers
fluttering splintered among fallen blossoms
the unabashed camellias bared
a scandal unmasked by a rude sunlight
our bleeding unabated
we slip into the brambles our sobs drowning
in the chatter of winds the river grumbles
about our tears
a sorrow tarnished by ageing stars
sputtering at dawn
a mourning heron ceases lending its grief
we recover our lips on pin drops of sky
the brambles open up for the wind
a chorus of ripples washes our bleeding
steps curl on our tears we rise
white among rhodoras
absolved
Copyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry, winner of the 2011 Shorty Award for the Arts, the inimitable gathering place of poets and artists where they share their love for their art while nurturing each other. Come join us!
evening wall (for One Shoot Sunday)
photo prompt by James Rainsford
the evening wall
leaks morning in silence
a tremor
in the breeze alters the vines
leaves dance disgraced
for river stones
but my cave resists
the shame
i dig into my bones
for secrets
complicities the dark sharpens
the stench of fear
light alludes to ageing roses
in truth
rotting roots falsehoods
smoother
in the night
i listen to winds lash
at recalcitrant stars
then limping in the heights fall
a thin flight through the bars
a moth
hissing on its wings
my cage
burdens reckoning
crude mornings lie to me
disguised as Venus rising
i cannot tell
in my fallow depths
who awaits for me to relent
cawing
(c) Copyright by Alegria Imperial 2011
Posted for One Shoot Sunday with picture prompt by James Rainsford for One Stop Poetry, winner of the 2011 Shorty Award for the Arts, the one place to gather for poets and artists to share their love for their art. Check us out. Click on my blogroll for OSP.
deep in a pool (tanka though still not sure)
deep in a pool
a school of tadpoles wriggling
inveigles my thoughts
of a summer evening
to fall in love with a frog
It’s strange how thoughts take on an unintended form or lines simply write themselves out as if they simply ooze out of fingertips like this tanka-ish reflection. The image emerged from a ginko walk at the Chinese Buddhist Temple in Richmond we of the Vancouver Haiku Group had a month ago. The ‘pool’ is the bonsai pool but not tadpoles, instead a school of gold fish darted through moss covered stones. So why the frog? I had thought of Basho and the frog then out of nowhere or perhaps the stillness water always brings on in me as in that morning while gazing at the depth on the pool invited the frog to my lines…how strange and unexpected thought processes can be sometimes.
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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