random seasons, a haiku/senryu series
stone wall
mottled hands escaping
through air
ham flavor
hangs about her sweater
hospice weekend
though touch-less
the intimate rustle of silk
fall
dog buries
bruises
hobbling out of my midnight winter moon
apple core
how to bottle
memories
a tiger
musing on my eye
autumn dusk
chopped beets
i wash the knife
of traces
open page
an opaque scent
in his bath water
oak stump–
i remember the hornets
last summer
shell shards
on a paint roller
a womb
sunshine in the snow #23b NaHaiWriMo
sunshine in the snow–
your shaded eyes does not say
what you mean
My #23 haiku from NaHaiWriMo is posted on the facebook site.
About this haiku–doesn’t it bother you, too? As soon as the sun bursts stark white, all eyes disappear under dark shades and goggles. And shades these days come opaque in what looks like midnight blue, muddy brown, deep ocean black-green. We face each other like we’re blind when we’re talking to each other. And that bothers me, that’s where this haiku came from.
begonias once/wintry day/as if by decree, et. al
begonias once–
by her window waiting
on snow
shorn of its flowers
its name magnolia–
once
wintry day–
caricature of cherry trees
against opaque sky
ah, how it blossoms the Christmas cactus
as if by decree
the poinsettia sheds
a week from Christmas
Stoned Bird (for One Shot Wednesday)
Night for us wraps the sun scruffy,
a rooster ruffled in flight, tossing
its last complaint: how long the wait
for three o’clock, the hour of
lead the hour to undo eternal
betrayal?
Unease stirs our beds made
of filaments, splinters
of our spirits borne on crumbs
we had long swallowed
then spewed out for
opaque dreams.
So unlike warblers, so
lacking their marrow-less lightness
to flitter on twigs, we toss in gales
to roost in flesh, demanding
silence as if to lure death
we must first die.
Straining to sing we cannot
either. If we were but robins, maybe
chords those daylong cries, those
dirges for absent mate, we may
un-shy declare—dark
is darker faith-less.
Who tears the pines in shreds,
pining notes so shrill these whirl
like tin stars? If we could
but like orioles blaze through our sadness
in the dark then singed, be land-
sobered but freed.
Yet, we are but ourselves un-cocked to night’s
endearments, tuned in to strident signals:
the steel-pipe whistles (if it were but Pan’s), the roar
under belly, a thud under foot then
the jingle of keys, a creak as joints
part to solitary landscapes
nightscapes where we have planted
monoliths that guiltless
we treasure priceless unlike we do our
spirit—this soundlessness in our
being, this singing bird
we have stoned.
I am posting this poem for One Shot Wednesday at the One Stop Poetry blog.
Join us – throw in your verses. Here are the rules (taken directly off their blog):
1. Write a poetic piece & post it on your blog
2. Then let us know about your post. Link back to One Shot
3. Sign up in the Mr Linky list, linking directly to your post, AFTER you’ve posted it.
4. Go visit others who have signed up! Offer support & encouragement. Share your love of words and insight respectfully. Please try to visit as many participating poets as you can. We all could use and appreciate kind feedback.
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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