Doves (a haibun for One Shot Wednesday)
The dove pair stopped cooing today.
Last time I glimpsed them, each moved listless in the cage – tails fanning each other’s snow head, red eyes spying mine. No one could come near. Each guarded the other like furious sentries. Could they have known they made such a handsome pair?
The white pair would not leave the dovecote. I caught them glance the brown too common flock; and then they turned away, lidless red eyes back to each other.
all I can see
what I cannot see
in your eyes
The white doves were at a wedding today cooped up, as perhaps they would have wished in a bell. When the newlyweds tugged at a string, the doves fell together – confused by the crowd, helpless in the grasp of the bride and groom. When tossed up again, their wings seemed weak. For the first time, they flew away from each other each clutching at light cords hung from the ceiling of the room where a wedding party was rising to a pitch. Their webbed feet quivered uncertain of their hold, their eyes redder, blinking with fear; they trembled as if they had lost their wings.
Now the crowd worked at a game with the white pair as pawns. Whoever caught one of the pair would think it a prize. What a prize–the glee bubbled off their laughter. The crowd did not know; how could they?
riddle:
when do heartbeats rhyme
in what beat end?
In freedom, a gaping cave awaits to trap lovers or a mess of strings. For the doves, loss of the other is sorrow that stones a tiny heart.
Copyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry, the inimitable gathering place for poets and artists. Check us out.
Suppositions (One Shot Wednesday)
I gape at turtles dip legs
in a pool the sun
just now deserted.
Tipping on rock
I sway on a shell of suppositions
whether
or not water not light
whets the eyes, whether or not to sip
not to see fills cavities of
empty cages, gaping hearts
that sullen suns disabled
when deserting lovers
dredged the pool
of its clarity and water ebbed
on man-made rocks
where I now teeter, nudging
turtles on rock-edge, my legs dipped
but short on water, my toes
a ginger-spread
stalking my origins
elsewhere.
I mind the rain drowning
in pools or falling on ginger roots–
soon juiced for life—
but I don’t mind it falling
on crackling fire where
raindrops sizzle, the sound of
dying doused,
which props me up still balancing
on turtle back
eternal suppositions
that stilled the pool where I
have gelled.
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry blog. Join me and other poets 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.
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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