winter solstice (First Place, December 2012 Shiki kukai, kigo category)
My haiku for the kigo category in the December Shiki kukai won First Place, my 2nd in this kukai. Here it is:
winter solstice
the widow tightens
her braids
(0,10,9) = 29 pts
**Very picturesque and melancholy
Thanks to all who voted and to the kind poet who made a comment.
In the free format category where Cara’s (Cara Holman) haiku won 2nd place, my haiku
on the prompt ‘departing’ gained only 3 pts. Here it is:
a leaf
races in the wind
after him
Thanks, too, for the votes.
2012 in review
Amazing and totally surprising stats! How could I have expected ‘abducted fireflies’ to top viewership? And to this day, I really can’t figure out why ‘sunflowers’ remains a favorite. BIG THANK YOU again, friends, followers, viewers and visitors for your great support. If I had been random in my posts this year, it was because I had concentrated on really learning about haiku and other Japanese short form poetry. But for 2013, I promise to keep up to your expectations. More fireworks for us, let’s wish, in the New Year that comes a day after tomorrow. HAPPY NEW YEAR!
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 6,000 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 10 years to get that many views.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
Thank you for your following and continued support
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
At DailyHaiku’s Cycle 14 November round, my haiku
November 25, 2012
carapace
the strand of emptiness
i tuck away
November 26, 2012
chill
a brick tile
cuts
across clouds
November 27, 2012
late night special
the postman rings
a broken bell
November 28, 2012
summing up the stars fallen leaves
November 29, 2012
cloud shapes
the turns we make
in secret
November 30, 2012
tideline
the calculated risks
of dreaming
December 01, 2012
because it’s your turn
autumn rain
Please pardon the imperfect layout. It’s actually perfect in the editing page but somehow, when the post comes out, some lines go astray. I’ve been working on it for the last three hours but it just wouldn’t straighten out. Must be a trickster at play…it’s the first time I just can’t figure out what’s wrong. I hope you’ll read the haiku and enjoy them instead, while glossing over the dancing lines. Thanks again for following jornales!
(Artwork is mine, created in my iPod with doodoo)
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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