random haiku (and by the way, check out haikuverse)
it’s over
the singing in the twigs–
leafing maples
***
as if not enough
to bloom skin to skin–
Rhodoras
***
from such a tangle
such primness in pink–
clematis
***
Queen Anne’s lace
on dog run’s collar
endangered
***
crow on cawing:
why grate
on each phrase?
This season just keeps bursting at me at each turn though I hardly stray from runnels of my days–same route to the bus stop, same side of the sidewalk, same crescent turn to the skytrain escalator. I even peek at the same display window, pass under the same now budding maples–the gingko flails its wavy twigs in the breeze already knobbed. I’ve counted tens of the dandelions from open-faced mini suns to those fearsome globes of hairy seeds, aha more threats to ruin seeded grass lawns. And yet and yet, without me looking up for stars, divining paths I may one day skid on, I do leap and be lifted often unaware by random gifts that turn into haiku.
This art certainly turns anyone who gives in to it into an “addict”, that is, if as defined by Webster not “one dependent on drugs” but one who “devotes or gives in” or in a ‘pejorative’ but to me, more truthful sense, one who “practices sedulously”. Once I woke up literally one day on lines burning into haiku that could work, some kind of a template engraved itself in my brain. The amazing nature of haiku is that once written, the template clears and the poet hardly recalls it. I used to wonder about this when meeting a poet I’ve read whose haiku I memorized and when I’d cite it to him would hang his head to scour what where when he wrote it, unless it won a grand prize. Not that I’ve attained any of that stature but perhaps because of my “sedulous-ness”–I must have written a couple of hundreds mostly “yikes haiku” by now–I’m beginning to forget what got published where or what has been written about this on this or that flower, bee, bird, star, moon.
It’s so easy to conclude that the universe is infinite because in the vastness, we turn into less than grit. In haiku, this truth is its essence. No wonder the ‘template’ self-erases like a magic slate because another truth soon has to imprint itself on it. What’s even more magical is how such truth reveals itself–no, not precisely at that moment when my feet, for instance, brush by the transmogrified dandelions but when in the dark I sink into space. Or like right now as I “sedulously” write into this void of a screen.
And voila some truths that ring in a greater haiku poet’s mind who picks it up multiply. Take my haiku “it has to end…” Friend Melissa Allen, truly turning out to be a haiku master who also diligently shares endless knowledge about the art and its many forms, has included that haiku in her latest edition of haikuverse! I’m thrilled no end. Check out Red Dragonly in my blogroll now!
Light as magic (for One Shot Wednesday)
The essence of magic is light
says the puppeteer to me as I peer
through his box of a stage
yet but a shell of trash—
limp pieces of strings,
sleeping snakes of light cords,
tubs of light shades, the puppets
mere swaths of rags.
Life moves only where
there is light, he seems to chant,
invoking magic from his words. In the myth
of creation, God first bid Light with words and Light
burst into rays like wings or so the puppeteer
imagines.
You can ride on light,
the universe does, speeding and crashing
on taut streams of translucence. I can transform you
into a nymph under these lights,
the puppeteer turns
to me, sensing my longing.
Could I grow into wings if
I wish
and vanish in the light? I ask. Or
like my puppets be born
and live if only for a fraction
of light, he answers grinning. I hesitate
but then, step in to his box of a stage among scraps of life
and give in.
Copyright © by Alegria Imperial, 2006
My first published poem featured at http://www.winningwriters.com and critiqued by its editor, Jendi Reiter, December 2006
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry, winner of the 2011 Shorty Award for Art. Check us out or better yet, join members of this gathering place and share your love for your art among some of the most talented poets and artists ever.
Song (my first lyric poem for OSP Saturday)
In dreams as in wakefulness,
bands of air swirl between us–
thoughts spinning in flight,
words but dust in the eye.
In dreams as in waking
I trail the wind, your thoughts
lost in longing, your moaning
a storm tearing at my heart.
I float hidden in dreams
as when awake like a wisp
I hover but a shadow
light sweeps with but a wave.
Once, awake as in a dream,
I painted my eyes like Circe–
the wind my voice for your eyes
knowing the magic lies there.
But in the dream as in waking,
the wind but died, failing–
the song I played my heart the lyre
for you, but a hiss among shadows.
first published in 2007 at PoetsHaven.com
For One Stop Poetry Saturday “Share a Past”, the community of poets and artists I belong to. We share and nurture each other. Check us out, pr better yet, join us. How? Easy steps are in the website. Click on it on my blogroll (Sorry, I have yet to learn how to make a link work.)
Window Frame (One Shot Wednesday)
She peers again. Light birthed
in snow has blossomed wings on
branches, an evening suspended on a hand.
The mist curls fingers at her, drawing her–
she hears magic bedded in whispers, magic
that melts on footfalls then trails a sigh, seeps
into thoughts, waking dormant ghosts.
She holds on, clutches on—time
has framed her waiting: even snow birds
scattered on the gravel have turned into leaves,
the light, a wash neither rain-lit nor
breeze-hushed, folding on itself. Frost
has coated the window frame where
she gazes wondering if her eyes
not the stars belong to the night—
her world illumined by the absence
of light, nourished in waiting
for the snow in his wake. Waiting
she wonders if absent stars not
the snow flakes on this window frame
have deluded him
to search for other skies.
Posted for One Shot Wednesday. Join other poets at One Stop Poetry blog 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.
my first ever ginko walk/my 100th post
Still imitating Melissa’s ‘numbers’, I’m posting my 100th as a report and the haiku I wrote from my first ever ginko walk with the newly-formed Vancouver Haiku Group. Vicki McCullough of pacifi-kana has helped in its formation with Angela Naccarato as organizer and we’ve been meeting every 3rd Sunday since. Here is Vicki’s report on our first ginko walk in Vancouver:
“Alegria Imperial, Angela Naccarato, Carole MacRury and Vicki McCullough had a lovely wander through Strathcona and Cottonwood community gardens on October 3. The skies were grey, but not precipitating, and the temperature comfortably warm. We marvelled at the immense diversity of flora and of garden plot designs. A few hours later, tea/coffee and treats at an outdoor table a few blocks away in the heart of the Strathcona neighbourhood capped the afternoon. Everyone departed with a head—and in some instances, a camera—loaded with garden images.”
My take on the ginko:
“It was my first ginko walk. My senses had since been so awake and sharp I’ve been quite confident I’m finally writing haiku though some good some ‘yikes’. But not only the garden, I believe, worked like magic–mixed in the potion was Vicki, Angela and Carole. Like children, which I think, is the spirit of haiku with its constant wonder, we gushed at everything–the sound of wonder–such as the blush of huge blooms as well as the remains of the once-beautiful or the once-sweet. This must be how the haiku ‘haijin-s’ (I’ve ben using ‘sensei-s’ to mean master but I think it has something to do with music) drew out from the novices their ‘reflections on the moment’.
And two of my haiku Vicki included in her report:
grey skies
on opaque pool–
no secrets
hydrangeas–
the same whispers
the same sighs
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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