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
Surrender (at “Many Windows” Magnapoets 2011 anthology series 4)
On her lens a pair of wild weeds
swayed from a rock by the edge of the lake
blooming tips brushing as if in light kisses
a moving oneness that flashed at me.
On the scrabble board back home
I set the letter “s” for “surrender”.
“Tell me how,” she had asked. My answer,
like waves folding onto each other these:
The way flowers let the wind play
on weakness touching but not breaking
a kind of touch that instructs bees on
gentleness—a kiss that leaves
no mark—that glues the heart, the way
the mind pulls threads off words
let gather from winds bowers of leaves
a nest for globules of light,
name the globules love the way wind
blows out the light the way
darkness kneads itself to make love real,
the way night lets the wind sough
a kind of song that shreds the light,
clouds the heart the way the wind
tempts the dawn.
Grit not tears fractures sight
the way the wind lets dust ride, whispering
words the way some words run into verses
to crack the bolts that quarantine
lovers, unleashing them to surrender
to flee to bloom, the way
the weed pair let the wind swing,
lash at them, the way they flex together
how like love could stay possible
where it isn’t, musn’t.
First published in “Many Windows”, 2011 Magnapoets Anthology Series 4, Edited by Aurora Antonovic
Thank you, Elle, for the inspiration.
(photo: esangeles 2010, Harrison Springs, BC, Canada)
‘fox moon’, a tanka sequence at Yay Words on ‘fox dreams’
fox moon
must it always be
this light
that draws your anguish
so feared so misunderstood?
your paws
on thawing banks the tracks
you left for me
as if I’ve lost you in
the moon’s shifting moods
silence
the midnight wind sends
you howling
always you miss my whispers
shushing your longings
in dappled shadows
the fire burns in your eyes
singes rustling leaves
you step in the moonlight
where we lay down your embers
come out of hiding
what greater fate is there
that awaits
than for us to bare our desires
we live for this and this alone
Thrilled to share my first in Aubrie Cox’s creative blog, Yay Words, included in a collection of poems by 34 known and published haiku/tanka poets on ‘fox dreams’. So honored to have my work alongside theirs. Thanks again to Aubrie for this wonderful project. Check it out at http://yaywords.wordpress.com/2012/04/22/fox-dreams/ Or click on ‘Yay Words’ on my blogroll.
Image of silver fox courtesy of wikipedia commons, photo by Zefram
harvest moon (haiga6 for 19 Planets Art Blog)
harvest moon haiga, my second water color attempt for 19 Planets Art Blog
harvest moon
melting banks of darkness–
our silent walls
I like the haiku which the artwork prompted. This process, as Rick Daddario keeps saying, has turned ‘way way fun’, for me. I do have a vague landscape in my mind before I start playing with the water color pencils (that I chose as medium for easy handling) at first, but something else begins to take form with my first stroke and on to the next. As more colors waft on the frame, it is then, too, when the haiku, writes itself, as in this haiga.
I think it’s not a good one because the image describes the haiku. I believe that with this genre, they should be apart like strangers sizing up each other. In this haiga though, I, the author, slips in between them, bringing with me what I would wish the moon would do more than what we know it does. Also, a haiku as author-driven as this is termed anthropomorphic, if I recall correctly, and it isn’t quite a good haiku. Still, I like this haiga and I hope you do, too.
full moon/this full moon
full moon
he smoothens a wrinkle
on her hand
this full moon
swathing New York tonight–
is it love?
(the first is a NaHaiWriMo post for the prompt ‘love’ and ‘moon viewing’)
‘fallen leaf’ for Svetlana(haiga3 for 19 Planets Art Blog challenge)
'fallen leaf' haiga 3 with clip art on Microsoft Publisher
fallen leaf
curls into its own
emptied self
Tribute to NaHaiWriMo friend, beautiful soul, Svetlana Marisova, whose death at 21 swathed me in heavy sadness today, this haiga is also posted for Rick Daddario’s haiga-a-day challenge at 19 Planets Art Blog, composed on Microsoft Publisher with clip art.
repetitions (haiga2 for 19 Planets Art Blog)
haiga2 using clip art on Microssft Publisher
ehoes
our silent repetitions
repetitions
repetitions
our silent echoes
repetitions
repetitions
of repetitions echo on silence
echoes on silence repetitions of repetitions
Posted for haiga challenge at 19 Planets Art Blog of Rick Daddario. I composed this haiga using clip art on Microsoft Publisher. The art came first and then the haiku. I seem to be good with visual prompts or I work better with them as I used to with the poems I wrote for the now defunct One Stop Poetry’s Sunday Challenge. Am I now creating my own prompts? I had never thought of it but with this second haiga, I’m starting to have fun. I hope it works.
So what’s the thought in the haiga? The cycles in our lives. The repetitions in shapes and sounds. Even invisibles our mind creates bounce back and forth as thoughts and feelings. Patterns and routes unfurl before us without our bidding. Because we need them. Repetitions. Because each day ends to begin again. Reassurances. Because each vow must be renewed. Reverberations. Because we hear better on a beat or rhyme. Repetitions because once never ends for us. Repetitions. We are embedded in them. We embed them in us.
morning tide/seashore/high tide (my last post at NaHaiWriMo for now)
a.*
morning tide—
still
the heaving waves
b.
seashore–
washed off burdens
lapping at our feet
c.
billows and clouds
fading as dreams—
high tide
NaHaiWriMo prompt: seaside, seashore 07/16/2011
*the only one I posted on the site
I’m taking a breather from writing haiku on the NaHaiWriMo FB site to rethink on where I am and where I’m going with this genre. My writing a haiku has been taking me longer and longer, more tedious because the more I’m learning about what makes a good one, the more conscious I am of each word I put down. I feel that this process is taking a toll on the intuitive way I write poetry as most of the lines I write do seemingly write themselves out in one breath. Not so, with haiku that I want to work; yes, it comes easy when I’m ‘haiku-ing’ for myself or in this blog but when I begin to be conscious of ‘judging eyes’, I falter and fail and I write what for me and often I’m not wrong, a ‘lame’ or ‘yikes’ haiku.
I guess I should try to learn more, read more from Basho who lured me into the art in 2005 when I found a collection of his haiku, honestly the first I ever read having been schooled in continental literature, at the Enoch Pratt Library main library in Baltimore. Perhaps, I should reflect more on how his haiku often turn out as a meditation like in the famous ‘old pond’ where the frog’s splash fractures the silence to remind him that in the stillness of a pond, there is sound, there is life that brings him back from the ether to the frog.
But not wanting to lose my haiku-writing cells, I’m still writing with the prompts privately and continuing with my haibun memoir, some of which or excerpts of which I’ll post here once in a while.
unfinished tales (for One Shoot Sunday)
photo prompt by Neil Alexander
at nightfall
a herded flock of sheep bearing
flasks of prayers
bleat on their steps
toward the temple
in the distance
crows scream for mercy
the broken tower
unleashes bats sniggering
at the sheep
in the darkness
the owl hoots at a pregnant moon
who smiles at shrinking Mars
the stars in his court simpering
conspire with the moon
in the thorny bushes
men braid their way into the night
on their heads their gifts
wobble like heads of wearied gods
once revered
seething fireflies their pin eyes
darting among snoring bees
beguile the men
who mesmerized by the light
melt on their knees
spirits splatter
on yesterday’s thorns turned
night embers burning the temple
far off where prayers thicken
barnacled walls
Dawn fans the dying
souls of the moaning sheep
and the whimpering men
the bats coat the temple tower
with their leavings
on the altar awaiting gifts
the gods disentangle
their limbs but leave their hearts
to morning worshippers
hankering for unfinished tales
Posted for One Shoot Sunday at One Stop Poetry, the gathering place that has been the most fertile ground for my poetry where among the most talented poets and artists whose invaluable nurturing caused me to wildly bloom. I thank Adam, Chris G, Claudia, Pete and Brian’s endless unfailing smiles who are leaving OSP and especially Joy and Jenne, goddesses of the lyrical realm for me, for my growth. Thanks especially for the Sunday page, Chris and Adam, these have driven me to work on original pieces I could never have written. It has been for me a blast of 28 weeks and as you had promised Adam, Chris, Claudia and Brian, I hope to meet you again or please seek me out when you are orbiting in the spheres again! I really can’t thank your enough for your support and uplifting words about each poem I’ve written for OSP.
my moon haiku on NaHaiWriMo (to mark the lunar eclipse)
full moon in Sechelt, BC
1.
rising moon—
the door latch opens for you
to gather me in
2.
pushing through the pines
Rose Moon
breaches my darkness
3.
waning moon—
breeze rearranges the petals
tighter together
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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