For one week at DailyHaiku, my haiku-a-day (Oct 14-20)

For one week this month, a haiku of mine was published daily by itself at DailyHaiku for its Cycle 14. DailyHaiku is “a print and online literary publication that exists to promote and preserve the written art of haiku. DailyHaiku publishes the work of Canadian and international haiku poets, blending contemporary, experimental, and traditional styles to push the boundaries of English-language haiku. Through our special features section and invited poet series, DailyHaiku also aims to chronicle and explore the diverse and ever-changing landscape of contemporary haiku-related forms.” The cycle continues with one other haiku poet each week until March. My haiku will be back three more times within the cycle at http://www.dailyhaiku.org/haiku/

My haiku:

October 14

vespers—
the chipped pout
of a stone angel

October 15

moving day—
distant chimes rattle
in the breeze

October 16

summer rain
on the clothes line
down feathers

October 17

cloud peaks
tilting on cliffs
heron’s wings

October 18

smoke rings—
an eagle curling
its wings

October 19

rumored dawn—
a crow’s cawing
rises

October 20

driftwood
the strange scent
of sunrise

 

Pacific Shores seawall in Parksvile, BC

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stillness (a haiga with my haiku response to the 2nd Blossom Rain Haiku My Photo Challenge)

 

stillness

the vastness awaits

our vows

Christine Villa has forwarded a challenge to write a haiku on one of her photos last August, the 2nd year of this challenge. Twenty-five poets from ten countries participated in this kukai, blindly voting for the winner from ballots Christine emailed. Rick Daddario won first place. Here’s my already tweaked response, which Christine has kindly put in on her exquisite photo.   

Robert Frost’s stone house in Shaftsbury, Vermont

 

He had bought this house to try his hand at farming but quite unsuccessfully, yet he kept it, visiting it intermittently while he taught in and around the state. The house is now a modest museum with sparse furniture but paneled with text, chronicling his life and poetry. It’s here in a room facing south of what is now a field of wild flowers that he wrote his most anthologized and quoted poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” one June morning following the winter he went horse riding. The room is dedicated to the poem, including how he wrote it—as a whole in one sweep—controversies regarding a comma, discussions and debates on what he meant by his most quoted stanza, as well as critics’ attempts at drawing out from him more than what he wrote. They agree on the ‘ulteriority’ of his poetry as he insisted there is no hidden meaning in his lines. He simply meant ‘it was getting late and I had to go home.’ But debates rage on…

 

“…The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.”

As a lover of his poetry, having been introduced to ‘his woods’ in my youth in a faraway tropical country, visiting his house has meant, for me, finding fulfillment of a yet another vague dream.

Alegria Imperialtxt/Eleanor Angelespix

spring song, 3rd place in Blossom Rain’s 1st Haiku My Photo Challenge

My haiku won 3rd place in Chrissi Villa’s Blossom Rain 1st Photo Challenge. The invitation was for haiku poets to write a haiku on a photo. 1st place winner is friend, Sanjukta Asopta. Here’s mine and the comment of the judge, Kirsten Cliff:

spring song
how it draws the heart
to reflection

I’m a fan of alliteration and loved the phrase “spring song” on first reading. It works with the photo and then immediately draws the reader to look outside the borders for further signs of spring. The poet here like the first two, has reminded the reader of Nature’s song, of the life essence that is all around us and part of us. And also like the above two haiku, the auditory sense of the reader is engaged, which lifts the photo to another level. The final lines “how it draws the heart/ to reflection” worked to draw me deeply into the centre of the photo, and deeper into the experience as a whole.

Kirsten Cliff

 

Here’s the link or click on Blossom Rain in my blogroll:

http://blossomrain.blogspot.ca/2012/05/results-of-1st-haiku-my-photo-challenge.html

solstice (a tanka*-ish reflection for One Shot Wednesday)

only in fullness
am I still–
i cast no shadow
as a rendezvous
dissipates into a sob

the wind flails
hapless
in the gingko twigs–
where perfection
encases feelings

if punctured
fibres
of wombs burst
water before blood
into birthing

a cry of rage
flags what a heart
hoards–
peace when it settles
lines its chambers

nothing like a Nautilus
the heart is but a pump
the fist opening
and closing
for fluids to flow

red colors
a river the heart
conjures–
layers of molecules
veil its nature

until the solstice
skids past its point
of stillness
wholeness is truth
until

a heart breaks
until a birthing point
reverts
to that first sound
that cry of rage

*tanka, sometimes known to be the precursor of haiku, is a 5-line Japanese poetic form used by court poets of ancient Japan. Scroll down for my post on this form in February.

Posted for One Shot Wednesday at On Stop Poetry where poets and artists of the most inimitable talents gather to share and support each other. Check it out!

a romance diary (a haibun experiment) for One Shot Wednesday

…grey dense skies barring the sun again, chilly on bare skin, spring refusing to leave so much so that even the leafing maple shading the terrace has browned with curled edges in spots, mistaking the air has retracted to autumn, perhaps? Even Nature seems dazed but I’m clear about this memory

spring’s end–
the squirrel flies a trapeze
as we cuddle

…amazing how the sun weakens on spring air yet its sparks illumine all else as in this thought filled in

a weak sun
glitters on spider web–
vacant corners

…even main street breathing unevenly at night has ceased in its restlessness as if the air has suffused all else to a quiet that for me opens up to reach out if it were but a soft turn in sleep when

mute stars–
spaces in between them
open up for whispers

…the night has bounced back in restlessness from a momentary calm which lulled me earlier in a dreamless space but awake now, recalling nights when I would feel lost, feeling an empty space on your side of the bed, but only briefly as you slip back in to turn back

the night
but for the darkness
our roost

…perhaps because they have built their nests, the birds seem to sing a different tune, refrains that rise this morning over the distant grumbling of jets flying off as I compose our song for another day

waning spring–
the wind rearranges petals
tightening us together

An edited version of an earlier post for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry, the only gathering place that brings poets and artists to share their art freely, comfortably, and joyfully and nurture each other. Check us out!

…recalcitrant stars and what to me is this haiku moment?

soft rain at dusk
on white magnolias–
recalcitrant stars

What to me is this haiku moment? For me, soft rain at dusk transports thoughts into a magical dimension where reality merges with the unseen. The eye then blurs and in a blink opens to a patch of the universe often easily called poetic moment, one that frees the mind of fences or the masonry of reason. In this haiku, I slipped from the real–soft rain on white magnolias and invisible stars on a dense gray sky–to a confrontation with the galaxies. The stars as in all Nature exist as themselves outside of me but I with a universe within me siphon them with my emotions; in this haiku, I imagine them protesting to descend and touch, perhaps, even kiss the oh, so alluring open-faced magnolias. And not them but the rain is made to fall on infinitesimal lips they imprint as crystal beads in the petals. The haiku for me is a collision of beauty and our imperfect desires, which I projected to the stars. Hence, it must end with just that moment, that tension I feel between the stars grumbling over Nature’s laws, my own recalcitrance over my finiteness really.

Posted for One Shot Wednesday at the inimitable One Stop Poetry, a gathering place for poets and artists, winner of the 2011 Shorty Award for the Arts. Check us out.

tsunami (a haibun draft)

What else but a surreal image? That’s how sizes and dimensions gape at us when Nature takes on our own nature of maniacal rage. An earthquake and a tsunami, for example, when men are turned into nothing but grit and as equally irritating to be winnowed out–if only Nature were like our eyes and hands that miss the tears along with the grit and spare some in prayer.

But sizes do not end where our span points midair or our eyes on walls of horizons. Dimensions spawn spaces blank beyond our knowing. What births in such depths and heights? Men have invented words to describe their fear. They brew these in inner cauldrons but fail to empty them out onto sand.

The steam scalds them at times, the overboil sometimes burns them. But dimensions distract them as they control what’s unseen, what heals, what’s scarred and soothed with words.

Beware do not build on an earthquake fault. As if the fissures may not crack elswhere. Leave the lush volcanic soil. As if men’s hankering for paradise can be tamped down. Live each day as if night were true death. As if, as if deafness can resist the moon’s whispers. Sizes and dimensions on sand only children can fathom turn out to be the truest picture. But even with a heart like a child’s men loses in his tangled thoughts a vision of sizes and dimensions, hence,

towers of sand
suspending stars and sky–
then come billows