a simple test (a non-haikai play of verses)
what cranks the wheel
why we need to care
which way to hold an infant
how to wipe dry the tears
when to turn away an eye
whose hand to hold on a cliff
whatever happens in dreams
whichever flower to lay on a tomb
however a name sounds
whenever a manacle breaks
whosoever belongs to whom
where to bury endings
because wounds bleed
laughter crackles
smiles break walls
sobs thicken nights
giggles bring in the dawn
sighs stir cankered clouds
words breathe life to bones
wings shade a peregrine
ponds feed moonlight
I will brave the deep
vow on a mountain
promise with the galaxies
pledge on steel
believe moons stay
The last of my haiku in DailyHaiku’s Cycle 14
February 23, 2013
palm reader’s eyelashes my fortune in a hat pin
wall portraits—
I begin my yoga count
from the top
turtle pond
a girl shares unshelled
peanuts
first stanza . . .
the missing subject
is a snail
adrift
in a fishbowl . . .
stray moon
what if
beneath footfalls
an egg laid
always
a raindrop hangs on her gaze—
Black-eyed Susan
to read in succession the whole Cycle 14 click on DailyHaiku
on my blog roll and go to archives
Thank you for staying with me in this haiku journey
(artwork is mine from a doodle play on my iPod touch)
…
me to Shiki:/how far can i go/with haiku? (his possible answers)
heron at lake courtesy of wikicommons
me to Shiki:
how far can i go
with haiku?
his possible answers
heron equals
stillness
***
stillness–
we break the rules
***
nothing moves in the pond–
turtle
***
plum tree–
only when it blooms
***
only lotus flowers
in the pond
***
wind to bamboo:
how far
can whispers go?
me to Shiki:/how far can i go/with haiku? (and his possible answers)
heron at lake courtesy of wikicommons
me to Shiki:
how far can i go
with haiku?
(his possible answers)
heron equals being still
***
stillness–
we break the rules
***
not a stir in the pond–
turtle
***
cherry blossoms–
what’s wrong with fruits?
***
plum tree
only when it blooms
***
the jade Buddha laughs
long after sunset
***
wind to bamboo:
how far
can whispers go?
stillness: water as prompt (haiku from my wall at the NaHaiWriMo site)
1.
stillness–
the lotus the pond
and the sky
2.
rain
on tear-stained cheeks
cleansing over and over
March 30 NahaiWriMo profile (facebook)
Wish you were here!
Today, I’ll be with Vicki McCullough, Jessica Tremblay and Angela Naccarato–we of the Vancouver Haiku Group–and YES, Michael Dylan Welch at Van Dusen Gardens here in Vancouver, BC for the opening of Sakura Japan Days. We have a table for haiku enthusiasts or for those just curious at the Floral Hall. We expect to follow ginko walks with Michael as well as lead some ourselves. He will be on stage for a haiku reading tomorrow. I’ll be there again tomorrow. We also expect to pin on a wall curtain selected haiku we’ve written on Japan.
Wish you were here!
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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jornales 
abducted fireflies (haiga7 for 19 Planets Art Blog)
haiga7 for haiga-a-day made with clip art on Microsoft Publisher
abducted fireflies
glowing in its eyes
frog
Another post for Rick Daddario’s haiga-a-day challenge at 19 Planets Art Blog, which I created from a clip art on Microsoft Publisher.
And what’s behind the image of the frog? This…
Noticing what could be unseen or merely imagined, magnifying the significance of what would be otherwise, some speck lost in the swarm of air particulates, this is what poetry, especially haiku, does to me. My mind cannot seem to work within limitations of space and time, or even sensations. What’s beyond a simple object in a single moment becomes a truth that breaks through thought barriers. Take the frog.
Basho has immortalized its break out of anonymity with his famous haiku, ‘old pond’. Reading it again and again, one steps into the monastic peace of an old pond until a frog that one hardly notices among stones, plops, and animates the peace with the sound of water. In a moment, the old pond turns into a universal moment of any moment that once was lifeless, suddenly, breathing from the unexpected.
My haiga is hardly a takeoff from Basho’s frog. It does not have the quietness of it, nor of the objective quality that identifies the poet as the observer but in whose mind, reality is arranged into three lines that total into a truth. While an observation as well, mine is less objective in that I state what I suppose in what I see, namely, the glow in a frog’s eye–seen especially in the dark. Knowing what it feeds on, I imagine fireflies and connect it with that glow. In reality, it is far-fetched as we know that anything creatures eat ends up far from the eyes, in the stomach. If a glow ever shows in the eye, it is that of satisfaction. But what I have done here, or think so, anyway, is tweak reality and made it slide into poetic thought, some other truth.
September 16, 2011 Posted by alee9 | comment, haiga, haiku, poetry, reflection | 19 Planets Art blog, alegria imperial, Basho, clip art, creatures, Daily life, Daily wage, dark, eyes, fireflies, frog, haiga-a-day, haiku, haiku moment, jornales, Microsoft Publisher, objective, peace, pond, reality, Rick Daddario, sensations, sound of water, space, stomach, stones, time, unexpected, universal moment | 4 Comments