A haiku trio on the sky
forlorn sky
a kitten’s inaudible
mewling
fog horn
across the beach
injured clouds
dream catcher
the shifting colours
of rain
a simple test (a non-haikai play of verses)
what cranks the wheel
why we need to care
which way to hold an infant
how to wipe dry the tears
when to turn away an eye
whose hand to hold on a cliff
whatever happens in dreams
whichever flower to lay on a tomb
however a name sounds
whenever a manacle breaks
whosoever belongs to whom
where to bury endings
because wounds bleed
laughter crackles
smiles break walls
sobs thicken nights
giggles bring in the dawn
sighs stir cankered clouds
words breathe life to bones
wings shade a peregrine
ponds feed moonlight
I will brave the deep
vow on a mountain
promise with the galaxies
pledge on steel
believe moons stay
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)
November sky haiga (Manhattan skyline from the Hudson at Riverbank State Park)
November sky
we fling our shadows
among clouds
haiku: alegria imperial
photo: eleanor angeles
this change of name (to celebrate Vancouver’s 125th year and my soon-to-have Canadian citizenship for One Shot Wednesday)
it is
a matter of spelling
only
this change of name
or am i fooling
the skies i look up to
the clouds
none i can name
the mountains
that shimmer
stealing in in stead
the names
of mountain ranges
facing East
among its jungles
my spirit roosts
alien snow
now smoothers
my laughter
i drift aground
is earth
unlike the sun
untouched
by sorrow?
i hear
from mourning doves
the language
of dawns
i mismatch
evening clouds
in my dreams
the chill stays
yet the sparrow
shares its songs
that seep into my sleep
lull my world
i regain my name
on Hollyburn
where a lotus by itself
on the lake
such poignancy
mirorring my loneliness
soaks the sun
as if enough
i trail the buds
lined along the Fraser’s North Arm
winding down and up
the river bed
the tide cuts a line
between my dreams and the sky
ripples catch my breathing
in rhythmic sighs
i’m scaling the breast
of Burnaby Mounains
my soul resists
its longings
i’m close to home
close to sinking
in the foam
skirting Horseshoe Bay
an eagle skims
my rhyming
my longings weave
in and out of the air
on a skein
of cherry blossoms
once only paintings on scrolls
i learn to haiku
thinking of moths
in my childhood those slivers of light
that die on the light
and fade in the morning
on my waking
i am who has always been
the city aground on my steps
whose name i can now say
even in sleep–
Vancouver
copyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
Written for Vancouver’s 125th anniversary (supposedly for a poetry collection but whose deadline I missed, and also in celebration of my soon-to-be Canaadian citizenship–I’m taking my oath in a few days, after four years of my arrival as immigrant). Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry, the inimitable gathering place for poets and artists. Come share your art and check out a great number of terrific lines from other poets.
…its burdens (excerpt from a haibun diary)
…it is the rhythm that’s constant it seems and not the stillness—the way the wind pulls and withdraws and the way the leaves sway and retract or how the clouds gather into masses and then dissipate into air or is it merely the eye that misses the jagged movements and edges and catches merely that moment when the rhythm shows and reassures us, as in the constancy of flowers even as petals begin to brown and curl in the edges and fall, because all we recall is their being there as in moments we have flowed into still flow into like on our early morning walks when
shifting tides–
the river unloads burdens
for us to decode
…and its burdens turn out to be what others fail to see as in the serene moments we share when as yet it is unruffled
(Excerpt from a haibun diary , a work-in-progress)
left out in the rain #22b NaHaiWriMo (haibun?)
left out in the rain
her old haiku
on cherry blossoms
I know the emotion of this haiku is sad but honestly, the transition days from winter to spring bring this on in me. Days rise white as freshly ironed sheets, the smell of dawn, with tiny marble-tweets from spring birds invisible in the conifer hedges. And then, as if a green-eyed nymph has waved her wand, clouds would shroud the sun and only the snowdrops tell it’s still day. I walk on Osler St. trodding on damp fragile weeds, barely breathing it seems toward spring, unmindful of the crisp stubble around roots of gnarled oaks. Overhead, twigs of nude cherry trees retain a pose too painful to glance at. Once, it seems so long ago, these caricatured branches had burst into layers of textured pink, inscribing ‘glory in the moment’, that I have written as haiku, which haunt me like old spirits now. And the soft rain, as if taking on my thoughts, turns into an outpouring of tears.
late winter walk–
soft rain on bare cherry trees
harder on my thoughts
Oooops, edit from an hour ago, should be–My haiku #22a is posted in the NaHaiWriMo facebook site. Check it out and join in!
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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