my ‘heart haiku’ (published in Sketchbook’s haiku thread Jan-Feb Vol 6 issue)
My choices
hearts of romaine—
between them candles flit
in the silence
she finds the embryo
of the seed–
not his heart
monitor—
his heart’s dips and coasts
but where is love?
losing a heartbeat–
on the hollow of her neck
and on her wrist
Editor’s choice included under ‘maternal love’
heartbeat—
her hand on her belly
searching for it
What do you see? (for One Shoot Sunday)
Photo prmpt by James Rainsford
1.
What do you see?
Not the span of my wings I ask not
Or the pin-lock of my beak
My eyes made of gems
Creation shielded you may not covet
If you could a universe
A glimpse of my wings
Such envy it has spawned in hearts like yours
The rufous I bank on in flight
If I perch on a shoulder
You could die in sheer awe of mine–ample
And reddish like the flare of the sun
Unsteady your life as your feet
Had rocked you solid blind to what I see
On my tarsus firm on a twig
2.
Stone from stone
That heart of yours locked in cold
I feel no pity
A head you preened
No sign of polish and spark
In coagulated cells
I squeal I do
Keee-r-r nothing to your hollow ears then
Mortar-filled now as your brain
A soul you wrapped
In manners as translucent as words un-rooted unlike
Mine seed-like but forward in my breast
I winter in forests you burrow
Lifeless in dark cavities imitating iridescent skies
Making it like home but you are wingless
3.
What do you see?
Battlefields you scoured between your agonies
And waning moons?
Or spires that sway under a mid-heaven
You strived to pierce to let spurt secrets
The constellations conceive?
Filigreed walls behind you
Await for storms to cease heaving
Whispering luring the darkness
Columns prop up the dome
You unfurled over the stare of an accusing sky
Do you see their spine corroding?
What do you see?
4.
As stone you see
Not twigs that soon arc to meet
A pink horizon
Or a black patch
Where drooping snowdrops
Bloom tufts on your path
You had trudged
On paths crushing crocuses and dandelions
Shredding silken azalea sighs
Eyes on grit you missed
Evergreens flailing in the wind to snag
the first low star
As you stepped into a
carrion’s day like a crow squawking at sky
hopping on a dumpster grinding by
I’m posting this poem for One Shoot Sunday at One Stop Poetry from a picture prompt by James Rainsford. Come join us in this gathering place where a most amazing selection of talented artists and poets share their work while nurturing each other.
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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