For one week at DailyHaiku, my haiku-a-day (Oct 14-20)
For one week this month, a haiku of mine was published daily by itself at DailyHaiku for its Cycle 14. DailyHaiku is “a print and online literary publication that exists to promote and preserve the written art of haiku. DailyHaiku publishes the work of Canadian and international haiku poets, blending contemporary, experimental, and traditional styles to push the boundaries of English-language haiku. Through our special features section and invited poet series, DailyHaiku also aims to chronicle and explore the diverse and ever-changing landscape of contemporary haiku-related forms.” The cycle continues with one other haiku poet each week until March. My haiku will be back three more times within the cycle at http://www.dailyhaiku.org/haiku/
My haiku:
October 14
vespers—
the chipped pout
of a stone angel
October 15
moving day—
distant chimes rattle
in the breeze
October 16
summer rain
on the clothes line
down feathers
October 17
cloud peaks
tilting on cliffs
heron’s wings
October 18
smoke rings—
an eagle curling
its wings
October 19
rumored dawn—
a crow’s cawing
rises
October 20
driftwood
the strange scent
of sunrise
Pacific Shores seawall in Parksvile, BC
chilled lines (haiga shared at Fusion)
chilled lines sunsets once
reflection composed with doodooo on my iPod
shared at Fusion
magpie gripes (another unpublished haiga, an experimental image)
magpie gripes
over empty skies
a haiga from my iPod, the third line being the image or what and how it is read as a composite
would the moon (an unpublished haiga)
would the moon
descend this low
for love?
ai, haiku/esa, image 2012
(blue heron perched high up on a weeping willow by the Lost Lagoon in Stanley Park, Vancouver, BC, where I live, taken last summer)
‘sunlight on the other side’ (a haiga)
Silk Bridge, Bennington, VT
sunlight on the other side
somehow louder
ai, haiku/esa, photo
‘on pointed toes’, ‘haze’ (my two tanka in LYNX Oct 2012)
1
on pointed toes
like ripples, why not?
if floating
the way we do in void
we find what matters
2
haze
like the opaqueness we dread
a crust
the guise soft hearts
take on to survive
LYNX October 2012
stillness (a haiga with my haiku response to the 2nd Blossom Rain Haiku My Photo Challenge)
stillness
the vastness awaits
our vows
Christine Villa has forwarded a challenge to write a haiku on one of her photos last August, the 2nd year of this challenge. Twenty-five poets from ten countries participated in this kukai, blindly voting for the winner from ballots Christine emailed. Rick Daddario won first place. Here’s my already tweaked response, which Christine has kindly put in on her exquisite photo.
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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