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
my moon haiku on NaHaiWriMo (to mark the lunar eclipse)
full moon in Sechelt, BC
1.
rising moon—
the door latch opens for you
to gather me in
2.
pushing through the pines
Rose Moon
breaches my darkness
3.
waning moon—
breeze rearranges the petals
tighter together
evening breeze…azalea (haiku)
evening breeze–
the azalea quivers
as we breathe
spring breeze/haze/blind alley (random haiku for the day)
spring breeze–
nothing but a touch
from a wisteria tip
haze–
when out of the bushes
a squirrel leaps
blind alley–
between your word and mine
a wrong turn
evening wall (for One Shoot Sunday)
photo prompt by James Rainsford
the evening wall
leaks morning in silence
a tremor
in the breeze alters the vines
leaves dance disgraced
for river stones
but my cave resists
the shame
i dig into my bones
for secrets
complicities the dark sharpens
the stench of fear
light alludes to ageing roses
in truth
rotting roots falsehoods
smoother
in the night
i listen to winds lash
at recalcitrant stars
then limping in the heights fall
a thin flight through the bars
a moth
hissing on its wings
my cage
burdens reckoning
crude mornings lie to me
disguised as Venus rising
i cannot tell
in my fallow depths
who awaits for me to relent
cawing
(c) Copyright by Alegria Imperial 2011
Posted for One Shoot Sunday with picture prompt by James Rainsford for One Stop Poetry, winner of the 2011 Shorty Award for the Arts, the one place to gather for poets and artists to share their love for their art. Check us out. Click on my blogroll for OSP.
Go ahead, despair in the tropics (for One Shot Wednesday)
Go ahead, pine away among the palms
throw up your sobs: the leaves will heave up
build you a dome to trap your regrets.
Turn away from the sun. Step on your shadow.
Summer has died on the sand at your feet.
Go ahead, let your humid sorrow seethe.
Thrash the frangipanis screaming red. Go ahead
smash the brashness: your heart will not stand
bleeding itself crimson it has you steeped.
Go ahead, gather the remnants of the soul you bared
the blossom you loved was a strange flower
the morning dew bred into a sleuth.
Let go the dreams stolen then tossed,
rivers will swell on banks spewing scraps.
Go ahead, rake in the shreds if you can.
Go ahead, scrape the hurt, wring it dry
no weeping lasts until noon. Tears cannot
stand the sun; it singes wet wounds.
The sun soon descends to a breeze waiting,
your shadow slips behind you when
you rise again. Look back then: the sun
you loved is only copper melting.
A song that plays on internal rhyme posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry, the inimitable gathering of poets and artists who love their art and love sharing them, nurturing both theirs and of others. Check us out.
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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