the wind we chase haiga
reflections
the wind we chase
traps us
haiku: alegria imperial
image/photo: eleanor angeles
detail of bronze sculpture at the NY Botanical Garden fountain
hummingbird haiga (found in New York)
who senses me
when I’m gone?
hummingbird
haiku: alegria imperial
photo/image: eleanor angeles
found haiku at New York Botanical Gardens (in The Bronx)
First posted separately at NaHaiWriMo under ‘migrating birds’ prompt by Pris Campbell
browning river (NaHaiWriMo post)
browning river
I turn woolens inside out
for hemming
prompt: new beginning
spark by spark (haiku with image, another tribute to Svetlana’s spirit)
Perennis Amour
autumn sun
dripping on roses
spark by spark
Another tribute to Svetlana Marisova who won first place in the 9th (2011) Shiki Kukai ‘Poets’ Choice’ kigo section. Svetlana passed away at age 21 recently. She’s greatly missed by those who love her haiku. I read them daily at the NaHaiWriMo facebook site where she interacted with most of us who posted along with her.
(The image is a bronze sculpture by Harriet W Frismuth, 1923, given by Mrs. Walter Crawford in 1937 for the Arbor and Trellis of the The Cranford Rose Garden, Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, NY, titled Roses of Yesterday. I’ve taken the caption from a text on the clock face the figure cradles on her left arm.)
three ‘starry night’ haiku (extras from Sketchbook submission)
1.
starry night
Venus sputters last
where to this time?
2.
eyes on the sky
is it them that cause
this starry night?
3.
cleaver
must it be moon-less
a starry night?
it’s the brilliance that awes you (another haibun from a ginko at the Brooklyn Gardens)
wild berry
it’s the brilliance that awes you–the spark in a bed of browning edges, some disheveled weed flowers, the dryness curling back to roots, the seeping cold taking back warm blood, back to its own heart. you have to peer close to know the eye of its brilliance, find a berry you can’t name, a berry you haven’t crushed between your tongue and palate, a berry you haven’t juiced for your hair and skin more than your heart. yet, wordless in wonder, you can’t but see your iris in it, looking in a mirror…
small
how i am seen
from Andromeda
robins at Brooklyn Botanical Gardens (a haibun writes itself)
Roses losing petals, lotuses dying on their shadow, a poisonous sumac inflamed, the promised turtle missing, but the persimmon tree pregnant, the spider lily swinging; I pick anise seeds and drink on the scent, pinch tips of dew studded mint, and then stumble on frog stones their absent eyes on summer flies–the water striders have long leaped to infinity–it’s autumn at Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, and after tracing the veins of a horse I figure a ficus has turned into from a knight on a horse by a fairy enchanted by his beauty, E and I skip the desert garden breathing heat off a muggy afternoon.
We pass by the Cranford Rose Garden again where I had posed beside a bronze sculpture titled Roses of Yesterday–this wisp of a woman ripened by love and longing sluiced by it in fluid lines. On her left arm, she cradles a clock’s face Time arrested engraved in words Perennis Amour (Love Eternal); on her right as if bidden, she caresses a bunch of roses that drip as if tears from her deep sad eyes. I had posed unabashed beside her, tainting the poetic moment, which I should have sipped in secret.
No perfume quaffs through the air even as we linger to hold on to each bloom thrusting petals on us for a touch. The gray sky stands by unconcerned as we lean toward a curved path to the main gate. Silence and distant chatter drop on my steps and a stirring in the yew branch. A robin has flit from it. The meadow ends and I shake off a leaf from my shoulders to find another leaf that has hitched a ride in a fold of my hood as we boarded the No. 1 train. It must have been the closed-in faces, the inward smiles, the inner rhymes I imagined beat in time with steel grating on steel and soon the scream of brakes that bid us to pour out of the steel doors even as we tighten our grip on moments we can’t soon recall that this haiku wrote itself–not about the roses or the absent turtle but a fleeting glimpse of
robins
skittering on fallen leaves
our grip tightens
autumn leaves (in Manhattan)
autumn leaves
swept along tunneled streets*
the past we can’t shed
…of Manhattan where I’ve flown last week.
Three of my favorite ‘insect’ haiku…
dragonfly
from stalk to stalk–
moonrise
trying my way
through yours—
Monarch butterfly
shifting light–
the truth about black
in this spider
…of the others in the ten published at Sketchbook 6-4 July August 2011 haiku thread. Again, I can’t seem to apply any haiku quality in any of these, except of course, that they’re written in three lines–though not in 5/7/5 syllables, which Michael DW has long debunked–and I believe present two images/thoughts not necessarily complementing each other but serving as a counterpoint for each other in what’s identified as ‘juxtaposition’ in haiku writing. I’ve posted here some reflections on my haiku but lately I seem unable to. I leave these three for now hoping they could stand on their own as haiku or poem should if they are good, that is. What do you think?
My voted haiku and haiku ranked ‘with merit’ in Sketchbook 6-4 July-August 2011
Sketchbook 6-4 July-August 2011 haiku kukai ‘starry night’
Forty-one poets from 15 countries contributed 111 poems to this kukai. A kukai is a peered review poetry contest wherein a haiku Topic is assigned by the editor. An ‘anonymized’ list of submitted haiku is then distributed to all participating poets and they are invited to vote. Votes are returned to the editor who tallies the votes and publishes the haiku for the participants, this time with names and points revealed. The following haiku that placed 7th (tied with 5 others) is one of three haiku I submitted and published.
opaque windows—
we dwell on remnants
of starry nights
Haiku thread: ‘insect’
Forty-three poets from 13 countries contributed 273 poems to Sketchbook 6-7 July-August 2011 haiku thread with the kigo ‘insect’. Two of ten I submitted and published were ranked among others as’haiku with merit’ by editor John Daleiden, which he arranged into sequences under the following titles:
The Carriers (with 6 other haiku)
crossing
our invisible bridges–
army ants
Dawn to the Light (with four other poems)
summer wind–
our thoughts imitating moths
circling the light
I feel honored and delighted! I hope they, too, entertain you. But to read the more outstanding haiku in this issue, access Sketchbook 6-4 July-August 2011 on the web.
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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