‘some nights’ & ‘come feel’, 2 more tanka from GUSTS Spring/Summer 2012
some nights
the moon hides its face
for healing
like our other side
that needs to be unseen
come feel
this frozen bud
let’s learn
from its tight lips
the secret of roses
GUSTS 15 Spring/Summer 2012, Tanka Canada
Four-year old Miriya took this tanka to carry in her pocket: Poem in Your Pocket Day
The future of poetry especially of tanka and haiku is secure; it’s in the hands of Miriya, the four-year old daughter of poet friend Christina Nguyen. Miriya found my tanka in GUSTS 15 of Tanka Canada, which also has her mom’s and many other known friends, that apparently her mom was reading and had laid down with the page open where this tanka is. Christina told me she read it and asked to read it to her again, and in the end, asked her to write it down on a post-it so she can carry it in her pocket to read again and again. I’m not flattered but deeply honored. An angel has taken hold of my poetry, hence, in heavenly hands. It’s beyond any other honor I ever hope to achieve. Thank you Miriya and Christina.
was it you
who laid this feather
on my feet
seeking my forgiveness
in the rain?
GUSTS 15, Spring 2012
My Most Beautiful Thing: an odd rainbow (so far)
(a haibun diary entry)
…the walk I had written you about did happen at a bird sanctuary estuary from the arm of the Fraser River that we know and a beach, first on foot paths that slithered among reeds and sedge grass taller than me, blushes of wild daisies with red hearts and knots like hairs on tips of red cloud weeds, getting wilder as the path deepened into the trees, the air singing with chirps and love calls or chatter rising from the thick clumps of more grass by the water’s edge—a gravel walk finally came to view and out of the canopy of brambles the sky spanned out with a swatch of pink, unlike the tender pink dabs we had waken some dawns but more like an odd rainbow of pinks we haven’t seen yet, straying from the sun’s aureole, but as if only for show because it began thinning out into a breath as the walk curved toward the river shore, same sands we would braid our steps on those mornings that summer a year ago and so, imagine me recalling us
sinking feet in the sand
we draw the tide line
closer to our morning
(My Most Beautiful Thing “blogsplash” celebrates Fiona Robyn’s new novel, The Most Beautiful Thing.)
‘fox moon’, a tanka sequence at Yay Words on ‘fox dreams’
fox moon
must it always be
this light
that draws your anguish
so feared so misunderstood?
your paws
on thawing banks the tracks
you left for me
as if I’ve lost you in
the moon’s shifting moods
silence
the midnight wind sends
you howling
always you miss my whispers
shushing your longings
in dappled shadows
the fire burns in your eyes
singes rustling leaves
you step in the moonlight
where we lay down your embers
come out of hiding
what greater fate is there
that awaits
than for us to bare our desires
we live for this and this alone
Thrilled to share my first in Aubrie Cox’s creative blog, Yay Words, included in a collection of poems by 34 known and published haiku/tanka poets on ‘fox dreams’. So honored to have my work alongside theirs. Thanks again to Aubrie for this wonderful project. Check it out at http://yaywords.wordpress.com/2012/04/22/fox-dreams/ Or click on ‘Yay Words’ on my blogroll.
Image of silver fox courtesy of wikipedia commons, photo by Zefram
‘twilight rain’, my second haiku award from the 2012 Haiku Now Contest
twilight rain
the blue heron mid-lake
somehow smaller
Alegria Imperial (Canada)
Commended, Traditional haiku
The Haiku Foundation’s 2012 Haiku Now Contest
…my first, ‘cherry blossoms’, from the 2007 Vancouver Cherry Blossoms Festival Haiku Invitational. Both awards with single entries. I credit this award, a real surprise–honestly unexpected not even hopeful, knowing who would participate in it–to the daily exercise I’ve hung on to at the NaHaiWriMo facebook site. The practice of writing haiku-a-day with prompts has greatly improved my understanding of haiku, hence, how I write it.
five haiku, my offering for National Haiku Poetry Day
moon flitting
from staccato dawn
an owl hoots
swigging in the pine copse raccoon eyes
is the fox a man in his dream?
snow melt
a zebra
snorts
at jet stream
moonset
ivy wall
its shadowed side
sunlit sighs
my anthologized poem featured as guest poet at Prose Posies for National Poetry Month
Thanks so much to Cara Holman for inviting me as Guest Poet at her blog, ‘Prose Posies’, for National Poetry Month on April 10, coincidentally the date when I first wrote this poem as a not-quite-sonnet, which I later worked on for submission to the Magnapoets Anthology. (Click on Prose Posies in my blogroll for Cara’s wonderful page of me and for the other daily guest poets).
To this We Wake
*
Scraps of purple on winter dawns
slung on arms of mornings
a sun awaiting for us
in between strutting seagulls
pigeons braiding shadows–
we snuggle.
*
We trace our days in dreams we
birth at dawn
when swatches of light
tickle us out to walk
on grounds of endearments our steps
have marked engraved by winds.
*
We step on
shredded blooms the seasons
gift us, stealing kisses, time on
halved imperfect whispers, wishes we rip
off the day, their ends we spangle on
skies, our secret into stars.
*
Yet we wake to another day–
what lies deeper than frost farther
than slumber, closer
to the core where
seasons sleep: to this, to this
we always wake.
*
Butterfly Away, Magnapoets Anthology Series 3, 2011
About Me from Cara’s questionnaire: (in parenthesis, what I wanted to add but changed my mind as my words started to tangle)
Alegria ‘Alee’ Imperial
Originally from Manila, Philippines now from Vancouver, Canada, (quite a simple deceiving shift of footstool in the globe)
I met you at NaHaiWriMo (where we daily shared a haiku for the same prompt for a year among many other poets. Touched by your spirit, I left parts of me in brief phrases on your space.)
Seriously into poetry in 2005, (shortly after workshop courses in fiction writing, years after writing nothing of me in media work and journalism, years of dreaming only in verse)
(I used to write more lyrical prose,) now mostly haiku, some tanka, and recently, haibun and also free verse when all three fail
my bilingual haiku, tanka and free verse for National Poetry of the Month guest post at haikudoodle
Excerpts from Margaret Dornaus’ blog today
http://haikudoodle.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/national-poetry-month-guest-post-6-alegria-imperial/
(or click on haikudoodle on my blogroll)
haiku
(Iluko with English translations by the author)
batbato iti
kapanagan
sabsabong ti sardam
stones
on the riverbank
dawn flowers…
LYNX XXIV: February 2009
tanka (Iluko with English translations by the author)
ayuyang-limdo
diay aripit ballasiw
ditoy a sumken
sinit a nalidliduan
nagtinnag nga anem-em
a haunt for sadness
the dried creek at the crossroad
here they recur
those untended flushes
turned chronic fevers…
LYNX XXV (June): 2, 2010
agsapa (in Iluko with translations by the author)
by Alegria Imperial
naimayeng
dagiti bituen idi mangngegda
ti as-asug
dagiti bulong iti sipnget
narba
dagiti pinatanor ti lawag
iti danarudor
dagiti agam-ammangaw
Bannawag, the Ilocano vernacular magazine of the Ilocos region in northern Philippines, May 16, 2009
dawn
(a loose translation with some nuances substituted as in some verbs, which in Iluko already imply a subject, and nouns that need no adjectives)
startled,
stars fell in the dark
among leaves
pining over lost suns–
loves
that light birthed
drowned in the roar of the
faithless….
http://haikudoodle.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/national-poetry-month-guest-post-6-alegria-imperial/
bay mouth (haiku–random post for National Poetry Writing Month)
Random post for National Poetry Writing Month
bay mouth
the strangeness
of first meetings
Notes from the Gean 3:4 March 2012
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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