zenith at noon (for One Shoot Sunday)
Photo prompt by Fee Easton
rain combs the strands
of our adagios:
expanse of thoughts
farther than the ends of flights
wings aching for home
a sight among stars
we tread the waves
sink in whirlpools deeper
than the heart of the flower
a hummingbird chooses
lighter
than marrow-less limbs
skimming skies
bending the spheres
constellations pirouette
on mid-strains cresting to slope
to skid onto silken lilies
our bed of seasons
in our clasped hands
the sea regurgitates the sun
froth fizzes a tickle
on our kissing toes
the sea breeze binds horizons
our eyes delude a sunset
our dawns begin
the night
the zenith at noon
the depth of our dreaming
Copyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
From a photo prompt by Fee Easton this poem is posted for One Shoot Sunday yet another challenge at One Stop Poetry, the inimitable gathering place of poets and artists, winner of the 2011 Shorty Awards for the Arts. Come join us. Share your love for your art. Be thrilled over what others say and what you discover of others’ works.
stars (in a series of 3 haiku each also posted at the NaHaiWriMo site)
field of galalxies taken by Hubble ultra deep field courtesy of wikicommons
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.
in ecstasy (for One Shoot Sunday)
the constellations cast a spell
on the roiling depths
gurgling in its altered state the sea
bubbles rolling a thousand eyes
as if dying
but in ecstasy enraptured
its frozen depths splintered
as million bits of bliss
an ocean of grief shedding
sheets of unwanted lead
sheen on silver
blinds receding stars those recalcitrant
asteroids mere reflections
on the translucence of illumination
a sea of enlightenment
the body once
a heaving mass of regrets
roaring now soars
Posted for One Shoot Sunday at One Stop Poetry composed on this space from an image by Roger Allen. Come join us in this inimitable space for poets and artists who share their work and their passion for it. Feel how it is to be nurtured like we do.
trimming the tree/winter full moon
1.
trimming the tree–
a cat’s frame
not a star
2.
winter full moon—
the missing napkin ring
beside the Star
–haiku for jornales friends with my wishes for the most of yours during this Christmas season and the new Year!
The lunar eclipse saluted us first, extravagantly, too, and the winter full moon sails on into our wishes among the constellations, sometimes witnessing for us who cannot see stars skidding through Light Years that will never be visible in our time. The secret in our lives is the moment, the moment lived whether fully or not, aware or not.
The moment I just learned on reading an issue of Poetry (December 2006) is thus the essence of all art. Art must not only capture it but live it for us the way we actually do but can’t fathom–in the hugeness of the universe and Time–until an artist does it for us.
You and I, newbie or master, implanted with the seed to let art blossom must take command–do we have a choice? You and I know we don’t have as it has taken over our souls, the deepset recesses of our being even, as I know from lines you generously leave here. Thank you–if I could but reinvent the word!
last winter in fornt of a dressed-up Vancouver Art Gallery when snow defaulted on Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympics
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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