me to Shiki:/how far can i go/with haiku? (his possible answers)
heron at lake courtesy of wikicommons
me to Shiki:
how far can i go
with haiku?
his possible answers
heron equals
stillness
***
stillness–
we break the rules
***
nothing moves in the pond–
turtle
***
plum tree–
only when it blooms
***
only lotus flowers
in the pond
***
wind to bamboo:
how far
can whispers go?
me to Shiki:/how far can i go/with haiku? (and his possible answers)
heron at lake courtesy of wikicommons
me to Shiki:
how far can i go
with haiku?
(his possible answers)
heron equals being still
***
stillness–
we break the rules
***
not a stir in the pond–
turtle
***
cherry blossoms–
what’s wrong with fruits?
***
plum tree
only when it blooms
***
the jade Buddha laughs
long after sunset
***
wind to bamboo:
how far
can whispers go?
absolved (for One Shot Wednesday)
swallows burst into our crude mornings
their flight staggering on false winds
we gaze aghast
this fractured air birthed on false moonlight
unpredicted
our beggar voice fades into whimpers
fluttering splintered among fallen blossoms
the unabashed camellias bared
a scandal unmasked by a rude sunlight
our bleeding unabated
we slip into the brambles our sobs drowning
in the chatter of winds the river grumbles
about our tears
a sorrow tarnished by ageing stars
sputtering at dawn
a mourning heron ceases lending its grief
we recover our lips on pin drops of sky
the brambles open up for the wind
a chorus of ripples washes our bleeding
steps curl on our tears we rise
white among rhodoras
absolved
Copyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry, winner of the 2011 Shorty Award for the Arts, the inimitable gathering place of poets and artists where they share their love for their art while nurturing each other. Come join us!
heron’s splash (published tanka)
heron’s splash
on river marsh rocking
the sound of water –
a mountain of wash
after he left home
First published in LYNX XXIII:3, October 2008
This tanka was first returned to me with a lovely note from the editor of a tanka journal, telling me to read more on the art form, work on writing it and perhaps submit again. She said though that first attempts don’t usually make it, nor the second ones. After reading a lot on tanka, I was convinced I wrote mine true to its form and so, I pushed my luck. I submitted the same batch to LYNX and lucked out on three of them getting accepted, one of them, the above.
summer returnees
1.
on the marsh
a heron makes a step–
sunset
2.
foam on the waves–
the hem of her skirt heavier
clings
3.
on ferry ride
the flight path of a seagull
ends behind my eye
My ‘jornal’? Memories in snap shots that keep returning.
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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