this change of name (to celebrate Vancouver’s 125th year and my soon-to-have Canadian citizenship for One Shot Wednesday)
it is
a matter of spelling
only
this change of name
or am i fooling
the skies i look up to
the clouds
none i can name
the mountains
that shimmer
stealing in in stead
the names
of mountain ranges
facing East
among its jungles
my spirit roosts
alien snow
now smoothers
my laughter
i drift aground
is earth
unlike the sun
untouched
by sorrow?
i hear
from mourning doves
the language
of dawns
i mismatch
evening clouds
in my dreams
the chill stays
yet the sparrow
shares its songs
that seep into my sleep
lull my world
i regain my name
on Hollyburn
where a lotus by itself
on the lake
such poignancy
mirorring my loneliness
soaks the sun
as if enough
i trail the buds
lined along the Fraser’s North Arm
winding down and up
the river bed
the tide cuts a line
between my dreams and the sky
ripples catch my breathing
in rhythmic sighs
i’m scaling the breast
of Burnaby Mounains
my soul resists
its longings
i’m close to home
close to sinking
in the foam
skirting Horseshoe Bay
an eagle skims
my rhyming
my longings weave
in and out of the air
on a skein
of cherry blossoms
once only paintings on scrolls
i learn to haiku
thinking of moths
in my childhood those slivers of light
that die on the light
and fade in the morning
on my waking
i am who has always been
the city aground on my steps
whose name i can now say
even in sleep–
Vancouver
copyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
Written for Vancouver’s 125th anniversary (supposedly for a poetry collection but whose deadline I missed, and also in celebration of my soon-to-be Canaadian citizenship–I’m taking my oath in a few days, after four years of my arrival as immigrant). Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry, the inimitable gathering place for poets and artists. Come share your art and check out a great number of terrific lines from other poets.
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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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Congratulations, Alegria, and a lovely poem. I wish I could immigrate up there, but they don’t take old, poor American horticulturists with no advanced college degree. Oh, well. I can enjoy it vicariously through your work.Esp liked
i hear
from mourning doves
the language
of dawns
Thank you, Joy! Why not try to come up here and see if you like it. Apparently, there’s a lot of artists especially here in BC, in the islands in partiucular like Gabriola. Check it out. I’d be thrilled!
Congratulations on your citizenship, Alegria! How exciting!
I love this:
i’m close to home
close to sinking
in the foam
skirting Horseshoe Bay
Thanks, Melissa! And thanks for loving those stanzas in my poem–uplifting from you!!!
what a beautiful ode to a wonderful city..though i’ve never been there, you made me see it..and congrats…that’s great
Thanks, Claudia! Thanks, too, for seeing an ‘ode’ in my poem!
Congrats! Canada is a great place but its also my adopted home. Nothing still feels like home though~
Nice to meet you ~
Thank you! And nice meeting you, too!
goodness you write with such beauty…i take much strength from such mountains and hope to one day scale those myself or at least see them…lovely…
And goodness, you see so much wonder in what I write that feels like ‘nourishment’! Yes, please do tell me when you decide to come scale those mountains, many mountains here!
Deference to post author, some superb information . “It’s always too early to quit.” by Norman Vincent Peale.