my anthologized poem featured as guest poet at Prose Posies for National Poetry Month
Thanks so much to Cara Holman for inviting me as Guest Poet at her blog, ‘Prose Posies’, for National Poetry Month on April 10, coincidentally the date when I first wrote this poem as a not-quite-sonnet, which I later worked on for submission to the Magnapoets Anthology. (Click on Prose Posies in my blogroll for Cara’s wonderful page of me and for the other daily guest poets).
To this We Wake
*
Scraps of purple on winter dawns
slung on arms of mornings
a sun awaiting for us
in between strutting seagulls
pigeons braiding shadows–
we snuggle.
*
We trace our days in dreams we
birth at dawn
when swatches of light
tickle us out to walk
on grounds of endearments our steps
have marked engraved by winds.
*
We step on
shredded blooms the seasons
gift us, stealing kisses, time on
halved imperfect whispers, wishes we rip
off the day, their ends we spangle on
skies, our secret into stars.
*
Yet we wake to another day–
what lies deeper than frost farther
than slumber, closer
to the core where
seasons sleep: to this, to this
we always wake.
*
Butterfly Away, Magnapoets Anthology Series 3, 2011
About Me from Cara’s questionnaire: (in parenthesis, what I wanted to add but changed my mind as my words started to tangle)
Alegria ‘Alee’ Imperial
Originally from Manila, Philippines now from Vancouver, Canada, (quite a simple deceiving shift of footstool in the globe)
I met you at NaHaiWriMo (where we daily shared a haiku for the same prompt for a year among many other poets. Touched by your spirit, I left parts of me in brief phrases on your space.)
Seriously into poetry in 2005, (shortly after workshop courses in fiction writing, years after writing nothing of me in media work and journalism, years of dreaming only in verse)
(I used to write more lyrical prose,) now mostly haiku, some tanka, and recently, haibun and also free verse when all three fail
stars (in a series of 3 haiku each also posted at the NaHaiWriMo site)
1.
pine strands
holding up the night sky—
how low can stars fall?
2.
moonless night—
my sky more punctured
than the last
3.
morning after
on campfire embers
remnants of stars
4.
sky patterns
on nibbled leaves
the Milky Way
5.
stars
digging into sand dunes—
our secrets
6.
forecast—
in and out of clouds
the constellations
7.
stars
through budding oaks—
he counts his lies
8.
paper moon
adrift among stars—
lost in the past
9.
Venus—
her icy sparkle
night and day
…from a prompt by Cara Hollman at the NaHaiWriMo facebook site. I love stars. As a child it must have been all I did when I got weary-eyed reading under a gas lamp or struggling through arithmetic assignments.
Both houses of my grandmothers I grew up in in northermost region of the Philippine archipelago had balconies with a rocking chair–one was a huge Viennese wicker in what must have been white, the other some kind of hard wood with carved head rest and arms where my mother spent rocking through the night, cradling my sister who wouldn’t sleep otherwise. I used to scan the night sky on the top of the stairs on those balconies but my first shooting star I caught not on any of those nights but once on vacation at Angeles Estates that I had posted here as a haibun.
Here in Vancouver on my evening walks–I love the fading light and the shadows–I hardly look at my steps but instead, follow trails in the sky; if it’s cloudy, I search for breaks or imagine ‘chattering stars and recalcitrant stars’ behind the clouds.
This series does say of my preoccupation with stars I hope. Perhaps, too, one more reason why my deep connection with the stars is this: my other name is Aurora, another name for Venus waning or the Morning Star.