ice cream/day moon my voted haiku at the June 2012 Shiki Kukai
Kigo*: ice cream
ice cream
the prescription
she misplaced
(5 points)
Free format: day moon
day moon
hovering on her window
a Luna moth
(8 points}
*A kigo is a season word entered into a data base that if used expands a haiku with a wider sense shared worldwide. Most kigo words are found in the World Kigo Database. While it lists predominantly Japanese season words, as is understandable, Gabi Greve who maintains WKD has been inviting haiku poets to contribute kigo in their locale, hence, further widening the data base. WKD is easy to access on the web.
A kukai is a prompted haiku exercise wherein participants (only) vote anonymously from an anonymous list of haiku with votes limited only to a total of 6 votes. This kukai is named after another Japanese haiku master, Shiki.
sudden hail/distant thunder/overcast (my three haiku at Multiverses first issue)
“I have become more attached to these particular haiku than any others I have ever read, most likely due to the time I spent with each poem and the fact that I personally selected them as my favorites from the many submissions we received. Some are safe but well-crafted while others are daring yet unconventional. Regardless of their ‘place’ in the haiku form, they each stand on their own as haiku poems of merit, and, in my opinion, deserve to be read and appreciated. I hope you come to enjoy them as I have.”
—John Hawk, Haiku Editor
sudden hail
among my silk scarves
a silverfish
distant thunder
the flagstones
fading away
overcast
an orange scarf flails
on the clothesline
Multiverses 1:1 June 2012
(click on my blogroll for Multiverses)
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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