New works at Under the Basho: early darkness, winter dusk, on the verge, pale sunset, word storm,
early darkness —
the dough yields its breast
to my hands
cattails, January 2015
Under the Basho my personal best 2015
winter dusk—
we scoot over
for shadows
Under the Basho Stand-Alone hokku 2015
on the verge
of rocketing–
scent of silence
pale sunset
the blue heron’s
midlife
word storm
turning shadows
into a burden
Under the Basho modern haiku 2015
Window by window and We (two ‘tiny’ haibun at Prune Juice)
Window by window
She peels her mornings. A miser of darkness, she lets the sun in by strands. I saw her once. She is a flower.
at the cusp
of Cancer and Leo
a fire wheel
We
We write our names together. It’s marriage says the book. Our meals apart. It’s work. We feed different nights. In different skies. What then is it?
cross wind—
cliffs echoing
wrong echoes
prune juice November 2014
Six of my haiku at DailyHaiku Cycle 14 Round 3 (Jan 2013)
Jan 06 2013
swing
twisting by itself—
wreathed school yard
Jan 07 2013
snowfall
…in a cup
…the hush
Jan 08 2013
red lobster–
her prying glance
through the mist
Jan 09 2013
as needed
to plumb the darkness–
night dew
Jan 10 2013
empty birdhouse—
I check my voice mail
in grey light
Jan 11, 2013
cold sheen
in the raised chalice—
her wet mumblings
Jan 12 2013
brittle
to my touch…
the old moon
DailyHaiku Cycle 14 Round 3 (January 2013)
Surrender (at “Many Windows” Magnapoets 2011 anthology series 4)
On her lens a pair of wild weeds
swayed from a rock by the edge of the lake
blooming tips brushing as if in light kisses
a moving oneness that flashed at me.
On the scrabble board back home
I set the letter “s” for “surrender”.
“Tell me how,” she had asked. My answer,
like waves folding onto each other these:
The way flowers let the wind play
on weakness touching but not breaking
a kind of touch that instructs bees on
gentleness—a kiss that leaves
no mark—that glues the heart, the way
the mind pulls threads off words
let gather from winds bowers of leaves
a nest for globules of light,
name the globules love the way wind
blows out the light the way
darkness kneads itself to make love real,
the way night lets the wind sough
a kind of song that shreds the light,
clouds the heart the way the wind
tempts the dawn.
Grit not tears fractures sight
the way the wind lets dust ride, whispering
words the way some words run into verses
to crack the bolts that quarantine
lovers, unleashing them to surrender
to flee to bloom, the way
the weed pair let the wind swing,
lash at them, the way they flex together
how like love could stay possible
where it isn’t, musn’t.
First published in “Many Windows”, 2011 Magnapoets Anthology Series 4, Edited by Aurora Antonovic
Thank you, Elle, for the inspiration.
(photo: esangeles 2010, Harrison Springs, BC, Canada)
being there/refracted twilight (my haibun at LYNX)
being there
…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, stripping the branches of their name 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 unloading burdens
for us to decode
refracted twilight
…first time ever that twilight struck me as that almost sacred time when the day tears away to let night slip in, how the bleeding sunset fades into lemon yellow to shell white so much so that facing west where the light seems to turn down as in a timer heartbeat by heartbeat, the houses, trees and flowers even weeds become solid walls of darkness—no punctured points on twigs, no dancing spaces between leaves—but haven’t I watched this on my daily walks long ago back in Harbor Hill but then, the roosting sparrows and the first star on tips of pines pulled my steps back to ruminate and settling in, twilight would be for us that time when
first star—
we turn down the darkness
on our own sky
(excerpts from a diary)
LYNX XXVII:I February 2012
harvest moon (haiga6 for 19 Planets Art Blog)
harvest moon haiga, my second water color attempt for 19 Planets Art Blog
harvest moon
melting banks of darkness–
our silent walls
I like the haiku which the artwork prompted. This process, as Rick Daddario keeps saying, has turned ‘way way fun’, for me. I do have a vague landscape in my mind before I start playing with the water color pencils (that I chose as medium for easy handling) at first, but something else begins to take form with my first stroke and on to the next. As more colors waft on the frame, it is then, too, when the haiku, writes itself, as in this haiga.
I think it’s not a good one because the image describes the haiku. I believe that with this genre, they should be apart like strangers sizing up each other. In this haiga though, I, the author, slips in between them, bringing with me what I would wish the moon would do more than what we know it does. Also, a haiku as author-driven as this is termed anthropomorphic, if I recall correctly, and it isn’t quite a good haiku. Still, I like this haiga and I hope you do, too.
3 haiku on heavenly bodies
1.
shooting star
sneaks into my darkness–
your laughter
2.
the Milky Way–
the arc of an embrace
on emptiness
3.
red–
can it possibly be the color
for a star?
unfinished tales (for One Shoot Sunday)
photo prompt by Neil Alexander
at nightfall
a herded flock of sheep bearing
flasks of prayers
bleat on their steps
toward the temple
in the distance
crows scream for mercy
the broken tower
unleashes bats sniggering
at the sheep
in the darkness
the owl hoots at a pregnant moon
who smiles at shrinking Mars
the stars in his court simpering
conspire with the moon
in the thorny bushes
men braid their way into the night
on their heads their gifts
wobble like heads of wearied gods
once revered
seething fireflies their pin eyes
darting among snoring bees
beguile the men
who mesmerized by the light
melt on their knees
spirits splatter
on yesterday’s thorns turned
night embers burning the temple
far off where prayers thicken
barnacled walls
Dawn fans the dying
souls of the moaning sheep
and the whimpering men
the bats coat the temple tower
with their leavings
on the altar awaiting gifts
the gods disentangle
their limbs but leave their hearts
to morning worshippers
hankering for unfinished tales
Posted for One Shoot Sunday at One Stop Poetry, the gathering place that has been the most fertile ground for my poetry where among the most talented poets and artists whose invaluable nurturing caused me to wildly bloom. I thank Adam, Chris G, Claudia, Pete and Brian’s endless unfailing smiles who are leaving OSP and especially Joy and Jenne, goddesses of the lyrical realm for me, for my growth. Thanks especially for the Sunday page, Chris and Adam, these have driven me to work on original pieces I could never have written. It has been for me a blast of 28 weeks and as you had promised Adam, Chris, Claudia and Brian, I hope to meet you again or please seek me out when you are orbiting in the spheres again! I really can’t thank your enough for your support and uplifting words about each poem I’ve written for OSP.
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
the wait (TCR issue 51 for One Shot Wednesday)
on the window
the bird seed beveled
a choppy morning
where the soughing wind
mimics whispers
snagged among caricature
of trees
ruined by the rain
shredded under steps
leaves trapped in gutters—
thoughts flung on
rain puddles where the rain
drops as rings blurring
the sky
in the lilac bush
the ruckus of the sparrows
sinks into the sunset
in the brambles a spider web sags—
we wait for the darkness
to open up for the moon
Copyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
Published at The Cortland Review Issue 51 May 2011
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry. Check out this site wher poets share their love for their art and nurture each other.
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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