day in the park (for Friday Poetically with Brian at OSP)
Crow in Bowen Island, BC
a cat eats weed flowers
my dog sits on the bird bath
mom spreads a picnic basket
for baby’s feeding bottles
three crows swoop in
on my bag of popcorn,
a weed flower sticks
to my dress
baby drools
on her blue bib the sky turns
golden, i gather the crumbs
under the blooming junipers
i pull up a heather, a
squirrel flies over my head
on a twig chippers chatter—
my heather turns blue
baby picks a dandelion
the sun slides down, over skies
a swarm of snowbirds
fly home
Posted with other fun poems by and for children for Friday Poetically with Brian at One Stop Poetry. Check us out!
the bride (for One Shoot Sunday)
dawn
settles on her barefeet
a starling craving to
flex wings
the ground quivers
from her tender steps unease
spreads
among wet stones
she wiggles
off her restless sighs
to undo her veil of wind
her hair loosens
strands of singing
rise over the heartbeat
of sparrows
she becomes a pair of wings
shirred skirt
the feathers she preens
to a sheen that stuns
a hesitant sun
the day flexes
on her limbs a thrumming
wakens the tender
lilies she stalked in her dreams
she steps into
her gaping red shoes
the brooding crows
scatter
a ruckus spreads
among the dandelions
the seagulls catch in fevered
pitch
she walks
parting the congregation
in blindness deaf
to the grumbling
over the rise
among the pines she raises
her arms an arc
to the sky
a swallow
skimming the meadow
where heads limp in the breeze
but balloons from her wedding
the gulls shriek
it pierces her flight
she careens
down the hill snags
a thread of her dream
first a thump
of the wearied balloon
that pumped her wings
next her toes
like a bird poised to fly
in a fall
(c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
Photo prompt by Lauren Randolph
For One Shoot Sunday at One Shot Poetry, winner of the 2011 Shorty Award for the Arts. Come check us out and share your art and poetry–it’s what we do her, share and nurture each other.
Spangled Seasons (for One Shot Wednesday)
Under hazed New York
spheres, spring sousing Riverside, earlier
cocooned in the Moor shedding off
mover’s trip, bundled molehills against
walls –once sparks we strung
onto a nebulae over
nights on Federal Hill—you and
I trudge on.
Trails we looped
between Chesapeake,
Susquehanna and
the Hudson, Venus sputtering
on Pennsylvania woods these,
too, we tucked abreast in
memory, if Manhattan
spares us.
Our cherry
noon-s have leaped into infinity
from finiteness; as well warbled
peace from cypress groves at
Inner Harbor, dandelions mirroring
our masquerade, a yucca spurting
by the window squirrels flying
a trapeze on pines mocked,
ends of days orioles
griped about—we plucked to
spangle our seasons. Soon mere
revenant: Baltimore winters we
skidded, wincing but
un-bruised. I posed for you
that summer cicadas plunged
into passion deaths, smearing
wind shields Fells Point’s
mists we eluded fogged.
Tall suns now spear
mornings at the Moor, we flex
our years on West Broadway: summers
on a mountain lake maybe, a bowery at
Brooklyn Gardens in the fall, sunset
behind Grant’s tomb perhaps, or by
Shakespeare’s lagoon, divining
on its surface the play
of wind on our
dreams
I posted here the first two stanzas of this memoir in verse on Nov. 3 to announce its first publication on Poetry Super Highway, Poet of the Week, Nov. 1-7, 2010. It’s been recently posted on Jendi Reiter’s Reiter’s Block, Great Poems Online, Jan. 19, 2011.
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry, where poets and artists who love their art share their work and sustain each other. Join us! Click OSP on my blogroll and find out how.
first kiss (playing with images on haiku-like lines for One Shoot Sunday )
over head–
a robin trills, i race
the uptown train
to meet you
on elm street
my feet on clouds–
wind swept petals
i skid on my soles
under a lavender bush
such fragrance–
so like yours
still running
now through rain drops
i slip but land on begonia quilt–
i pick three dandelions
i race on
a pair of crows–
from juniper tops cawing a duet
swoops in on a picnic spread
i turn away
afternoon rain
coming harder i skid under a shade
of cherry blossoms
my heart thrums faster
singling on a wall
under weeping crab apple blooms–
the rain their tears and mine
am i crying?
my watch
eats up minutes–
you will be gone
i am sobbing
the rain stops–
sunlight ripples through the sky
falls on a lilac hedge i race on
to meet you
against a wall
the sun bursts on your smile
you sprint to meet me
under a rain-washed sky
eyes dripping
sweetened rain, petals on our lips
wet, soft, warm
we kiss our first
on the heart-shaped sky
we sign our names,
say our vows
on three dandelions
Phot by Katherine Forbes
Posted for One Shoot Sunday from a photo by Katherine Forbes. Join other poets at One Stop Poetry blog who write verses for love, read those of others, leave a word of encouragement and/or insight with the same love and respect. Post your piece on your blog and sign up in the Mr. Linky list
Masquerade (for one shot Wednesday)
On stubbly grass unthinking on my heels, I crush a pair
of yellow dots here on a nameless hill-rise where
spark these fallen stars—
perhaps?
Thumb-sized faces, touching shyness, such subterfuge for such
malicious growth: these weeds whose birth in helium
augur choking death to promises of
rose-lipped tulips and such
or nodding daffodils and flare-collared narcissus. But my pupils
to its petals the dandelion-look cannot but inveigle, openness
its sheath of innocence so unlike
the earnestness
ivy creepers throttle a birch or the blatant avarice a herd of agile paws
and furry tails sidestep my indifference, trembling to un-husk
a single nut, pointed jaws nibbling time—no
pretenses there. Masquerades
I would rather find, disguises to my own guises—the sun-gazing
adoring face-thrusting-trust dandelions pose on a universe
of pupils, mine for one but not mine, whose malevolent
leaps spring from
fear. I, who face no fear of thwarted rebirths from tumescent bulbs
or such other spurts of life I could cause, see no power in these
weeds I now half bend to gaze at as if loving them
flowering, relishing
the sound of their name. These weeds, are they perhaps a kin
to Leo, the constellation the overbearing sun
rules? Could they be remnants of colliding
stars, battling their way
as if certain a center lay in the black void and bursting, littered
a blue dot where on patches, this hill-rise for one, struck
a bed for them to mutate and transmogrify? If
they were
I need not wonder then why they deserve such spite—rolling as
weeds these minute suns in masquerade, I know as
I know what I am.
I am posting this poem for One Shot Wednesday at the One Stop Poetry blog.
Join us – throw in your verses. Here are the rules (taken directly off their blog):
1. Write a poetic piece & post it on your blog
2. Then let us know about your post. Link back to One Shot
3. Sign up in the Mr Linky list, linking directly to your post, AFTER you’ve posted it.
4. Go visit others who have signed up! Offer support & encouragement. Share your love of words and insight respectfully. Please try to visit as many participating poets as you can. We all could use and appreciate kind feedback.
Lullaby (yet another lyric poem from haiku-strays)
I wrote this poem on one of the early days when obsessed with learning haiku, the form seemed to shape my brain–wherever that part is where words run into lines. This thought, this memory sparked after I wrote a personal essay that I submitted to Passager about my grandmother’s bath-hair washing ritual (“Digos: a ritual” also posted at my other blog, http://filipineses09.wordpress.com). The rhythm apparently timed in with my measured strides during my daily walk at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore where I lived then. Water, birds: seagulls, ducks, robins, ravens, orioles, sparrows; trees: conifers, chestnuts, magnolias; weeds: dandelions, clover, jewel weeds co-inhabited the dome–a span of sky. I walked daily toward dusk, which is why perhaps this poem—or haiku that strayed—is a lullaby.
grandma on a swing
flying on a lullaby–
a smile thin as breath
combing her hair, my fingers
the teeth untangling silk knots–
her tiara
cheeks I kiss–once
a cushion of veined organza
now loose ripples
Paloma, she warbles–
a dove, my name, alights
on her lips, flapping wings
moons chasing suns
sprout wings–in the darkness
whispers grow eyes
in her flight
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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