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
butterfly/and hummingbird–/after the same flower (and my other flower haiku at Sketchbook)
monarch butterfly courtesy of wikicommons
butterfly
and hummingbird—
after the same flower
snowdrop–
will I ever see
your face?
magnolias–
the longing begins
at moonrise
cherry blossoms
shedding in the moonlight—
the Milky Way
tulips—
recalling
my first kiss
salmon berry blossom:
how deep is your heart
for a hummingbird?
Published in haiku thread,Sketchbook April-May 2011 (kigo: flower)
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.
you and i in seven pieces (for One Shot Wednesday)
1.
a flower basket moon—
tilting from a swing of arms
in revolving doors
our sighs uncompleted in the eaves
a storm hanging by a cloud
2.
squalling gulls
rip our day in shreds–
the only sound
between us and the stones
and the dying flowers
3.
why the mimosa
shrinks in pain at our steps–
i search for your scent
you squint from its thorns
i sip drops of night dew
4.
darkness leaves us blind
we grope for our eyes but find
our lips like embers
on a bed of pebbles left to die–
we thrum like restless stars
5.
we reap our moaning
gather folds of reticent dawn
into my breast–
you slice away your pain
my flesh thins out in your hands
6.
i beg for the sun
lodged in the cleavage of morning–
you toss it flaming
your destiny line singed
the line of your heart scarred
7.
i lie in wait–
the next moon comes astride
the east wind raging
washing away whirlpools of dust
baring the sun i conceived
soleil levant by Claude Monet 1872 courtesy of wikipedia
squabbling crows/sunny day at Zoo/the drum beat of rain NaHaiWriMo prompts turned tanka!
1. Prompt #24 flower
squabbling crows
scream into my thoughts–
at dawn how you left
hollow imprints of sleep
scented dreams of jasmine blooms
2. prompt #25–zoo
sunny day at Zoo
lioness searches for my eyes
behind my black shades–
the way we hold our hearts
as we speak of fears and wants
3. prompt #26–drum
the drum beat of rain
on window pane imprints tears
a flood breaking hearts
in loneliness gray rain sneaks
into wells to fill the dryness
Tanka drafts I should call these because I’m certain that when I read them tomorrow, they will sound bad. These came as spontaneously as the haiku I’ve been posting on the NaHaiWriMo wall. There’s an energy that takes over at the site like a hand that holds my wrist as I pause or pose to let the first word dance on the screen. It’s the presence of so many other haiku writers– whose names I recognize from the Shiki kukai and haiku journals even some haijin–that I think itself serves as the prompt and the word, a prop. The experience, though I hopped in only on Day 19, has been exhilarating.
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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jornales 
‘the colour plum’ in a quartet of (non-haikai*) 3-line poems…and why
I think I’m veering farther and farther away from haiku, but the structure has stayed like a template in my being; hence, my lines insist on being ‘three’, of two parts often unrelated (juxtaposition). While I still draw the essence of my poems from Nature, what comes out no longer expands contemplation but rather, the lines focus often on painful truths. I know there’s enough pain swirling in the universe right now (as is perceived) and it’s what I can’t seem to whitewash with the beauty of virgin snow. I wish I could but in writing haiku, the practice of finding ‘two-sides’ in a whole, has stayed with me as a simultaneous numbra/penumbra, thus, these non-haikai* poems. Still, it could just be a phase that has slipped in with grey November, which spring will lift up.
the colour plum
hints of pay back
maneuvers
bramble flower
still not enough
prickly stares
isolation bars
no matter our fingers
in knots
speckled steps
dare you break
rain patterns
moon basket
in it I carry
a widow’s comb
*nod to Johannes S. H. Berg, who coined it
November 28, 2014 Posted by alee9 | comment, non-haikai, poetry | bramble, colour, comb, fingers, flower, moon, plum, rain | 2 Comments