Just a heart (a haibun)

I honor the Force who/that sowed the seed who became me. In degrees though often unaware, I grew a heart.

from rumblings a sprout answers to a name

Lashed by winds, bathed by rains, kissed by moonrise, swaddled by fog, cradled by dawns, how can I be less than a song

neither eye nor lips the knowing sky

They say I leave footprints, scents, echoes, a ghost prowling with the fox for a lair, yet no one says my name

far off foghorns for every one

(My response, originally posted as a comment, to Dan Hasse’s powerful haibun at Facebook: thank you, Dan!!)

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inner cities (a sort of versified haibun, an experiment)

 

draperies of wrinkled winds the affectations we traded for dawn kisses straining the moon

listen to the children beginning their climb on a spiral of electives we elders concocted out of broken yarn

they’ll string them together with knots we had thought as we waxed the yarn sliding them between our canines

a child bursts into a scream at birth shedding his mother’s blood-coating a slimy red he knew he did not need but by then gurgling through his veins

this evening of attrition it’s blood roiling unseen that drives him to untangle the net he knotted and wove from broken yarn those strands his mother also called blood

we watch out for when he and his siblings scramble up our limbs and bite our tongue and begin to scale the spiral to the moon

 

a tale of inner cities

…flat lining a wall

Road Kill (a haibun)

“Big brown eyes”, I caught the driver gush. He and an off- duty driver have been trading road kill stories. I stop breathing over perhaps a girl stunned by his brake lights. Only to find relief from the next phrases dropped on my eaves; he talks of a Bambi like deer that appeared on his headlights. Now I want to intrude into their cove though I’m no driver–I’m just a thief. And so, while my bus mates recede into their inner ears, I rise and pick up the limp fawn, and squeeze my heat, my passions, rages, regrets, hungers. The sun bursts out of and back in on the wind shield, and on eyes turned to me as on four legs, I pause by the door to get off. Behind me the driver gushes, “Big brown eyes”.

 

map of the world

only on top soil

the Date (a haibun)

I haven’t posted a haibun in a long while. Here’s one I wrote yesterday:

the Date

I turn towards the brambles—there’s nothing but twig skeletons, and dumpsters waiting for the undertaker. The bus driver takes a minute to shake off the drizzle from his hair, another to brush his moustache, take his jacket off, fluff the cushion on his seat, wiggle for comfort, secure his belt in, fix the mirrors to his eye level, chipping off three hundred or so seconds, splintering my anxiety. The sun would have edged to its zenith by now, the moon fading in its rims, and the bay inhaling air globules soon to heave and ebb. I’ve distended into a thin membrane of capillaries throbbing with a star, waiting for his name to come up in my mind.

 

mnemonic drill

the trench deeper

in sand dunes

 

Window by window and We (two ‘tiny’ haibun at Prune Juice)

Window by window 

She peels her mornings.  A miser of darkness, she lets the sun in by strands. I saw her once. She is a flower.  

at the cusp 

of Cancer and Leo 

a fire wheel

 

We

We write our names together. It’s marriage says the book. Our meals apart. It’s work. We feed different nights. In different skies. What then is it?

cross wind—

cliffs echoing

wrong echoes 

 

prune juice November 2014

 

STREET NEWS an experiment on mixing haibun and haiga (haibunga)

 

Street news (a haibun)

A school of clams caused a shoreline village to gather whispers. A fisherman proposed that the shaman must talk to the chief clam. What about? A boy asked. The chief clam passed the word around…

 

hum by hum

moonlight floods

the secret code

 

Betrayed, the villagers turned to the clams and pried them open. In the streets, a furor rages…

 

about time

the chill turns

a white page

dust once, a haibun

 

Oh, the map I use? It’s uncharted and unnamed. It’s wild woods and volcanic rocks. There are lakes and rice field puddles but also marsh and hot spring pools, smoky from the depths. Unless ‘I find a flower I can name’, it’s hard even for me to find my way back. Birds sing and talk but mostly unseen except the owl. Sometimes, he reveals their name. I’ve taken notes but forget about them the moment I walk away. My map always seems new, uncharted and unnamed. I know it’s not good but maybe the owl will help someday somehow.

dust once…

somehow a chicken knows

some stones

 

Lakeview International Journal of Literature and the Arts August 2013

(a kind of short autobiography)

pondering, a haibun

 

am i done? nibbling patterns on pavements leave white spaces in my eye. the breeze nuzzling cypress tips seems but a gymnastic exercise. young crows pecking at grass echo yesterday’s chore and the day before and before. browning grass the way same time last year their death. the wrinkled sky a day too soon like my skin since last summer. do mountains ever grow? the tide at English Bay wear out the same seams i left footmarks last year and the year before.  what’s left of the raccoon colony by the Lost Lagoon? the old woman feeding ducks wears the same straggly hat. she calls the blue heron by another name. same voice to which i answer. we speak in symbols by the glass pond. what is sky? am i a stone? am i who I’m not? when I am?

 

creeping among rushes leftover thunder

 

summer dusk

summer dusk (a symbiotic poem) 

Always, a loon scours the river shore with me. We dip into indentations of footprints. Share secrets we unravel: the scalloped lips of shells, the broken ribs of fish, the names we name stones. We use no words. The loon thinks he sings, his song always a dirge. I sigh on endless waves, my sighs fragile as peace. We count our regrets on fingers of evergreens, codes a river will never understand. At sunset, the loon spreads its wings to scoop the sun. I let loose my hair in strands to make a web. We wait.

summer dusk
a spider gnaws
at the sunset

LYNX 28:1 February 2013

A haiku moment in Vancouver (report of a poetry reading by VHG)

first reading—
in the lamplight
oak leaves in rain – Angela J. Naccarato

The two-year old Vancouver Haiku Group (VHG) held its first poetry reading, Under the Cherry Tree: An Evening of Haiku, Free Verse and Music, on May 31 at Chapters on Robson Street.

Opening number were by teacher Brenda Larsen’s grade four and five students, Juliana Nunes and Matthew Zhao, of Panorama Heights Elementary School in Coquitlam, BC, reading their own poems and selected poems of their classmates. The third floor reading room display of cherry blossom sprigs made out of crepe paper and wooden twigs, as well as origami cranes with haiku written on the wings, were also their handiwork.

Next, Angela J. Naccarato, facilitator for the VHG, read Amelia Fielden’s tanka from an online series titled Sakura Sakura. Amelia is a professional translator of Japanese literature, as well as an enthusiastic writer of tanka in English. Tanka is a traditional Japanese form of poetry and dates back to the 7th century. Nik Stimpson, a university student, accompanied Angela’s reading on the clarinet.  For the second part of the program, Angela read a series of haiku, a tribute to her trip to the British Isles, accompanied by James Mullin on a Javanese gamelan.  Angela and James emceed and coordinated the reading.

Still on the cherry blossom theme, Jessica Tremblay, read her Best BC Poem from the 2008 Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational (VCBF HI):

late for work—
cherry petals
in my hair

She followed this up with a delightful presentation of selected frames from her Old Pond comics about a frog trying to learn haiku–a take-off on Basho’s classic haiku. Basho is one of the four great masters of Japanese haiku.

cherry blossoms, Sakura Park, Claremont St., New York City (photo by Eleanor Angeles)

Alegria Imperial also read her winning and first-published haiku from the 2007 VCBF HI, her other winning and published haiku, some of  her published tanka along with a haibun, a literary composition that combines prose and haiku.

VCBF Haiku Invitational winning haiku by Canadian poets through the years and other works

Vicki McCullough, who has won several VCBF HI awards, and coordinator of the BC region for Haiku Canada, also known as pacifi-kana, first read a selection of her own haiku. She then followed it up with other cherry blossom haiku from across the HI years such as those of Haiku Canada members Alice Frampton, elehna de sousa, Naomi Beth Wakan and Susan Constable—and a few more favourites showing the international diversity of VCBF HI submissions. She concluded with a six blossom-themed tanka by Haiku Canada Review editor LeRoy Gorman, from his new collection,  fast enough to leave this world.

Brenda began her reading with the background story of her haiku inspired by the cherry tree in the backyard of the Historic Joy Kogawa House in Vancouver’s Marpole area, the former home of Canadian author Joy Kogawa. To conclude her reading, Brenda read more haiku followed by a touching free verse.

Other highlights

Another highlight of the evening was Rachel Enomoto’s reading in Japanese and English the works of Japanese women haiku poets from the 18th to the 20th century. Following Rachel was James Mullin, who said he learned humility through writing haiku, a genre of writing that appears to be so simple, yet offers such complexity within its structure and form. He read from his collection of free verse and recited his most memorable haiku, inspired by a VHG gingko walk through the heritage memorial park in Burnaby, east of Vancouver.

Guest poet Ruona Asplund read poems from her three published books of Nature poetry, and for a musical break, Nik performed a Quebecois piece, Isabeau s’y promene and Mozart’s Sonatina No. 1. To end the program, songwriter Jared Korb sang and played on his acoustic guitar.

From the audience, Hadley Meikle took advantage of the open mike to read poetry from bits and pieces of her journal.

Chapters employee Cameron Russell helped facilitate the event, displayed a selection of haiku books, graciously supplied water and glasses, and took pictures of the event. His photos can be viewed  at the Chapters Robson facebook page.

Up soon, a second poetry reading

VHG meets every third Sunday of the month at the Britannia Community Services Centre on Commercial Drive, Vancouver. Discussed in the meetings are basics in writing haiku and members’ haiku written with a prompt, which they workshop. Facilitator Angela J. Naccarato has also introduced intuitive exercises that aim at tapping the subconscious. The group has had three gingko walks, at Strathcona Gardens in Vancouver, the Chinese Buddhist Temple in Richmond and the Heritage Cemetery in Burnaby.

Already, VHG’s second poetry reading has been scheduled in partnership with Britannia at its annual summer event, Artful Sundays, held at the centre’s premises for four consecutive Sundays from Aug. 12 to Sept. 12. VHG members will present their poems at the performer’s tent on Aug. 26. They will also conduct haiku writing and crane origami making workshops.