under a wilting sky (for One Shoot Sunday)
'he never calls' photo prompt by Rob Hanson
notes you left on a wrinkled sky
that’s never blue always a heartless hue bruises
no sun can stand
shifts eternity imposes: no mere pauses—
your convenient absence these slashes
on tender paper you tore off the back of my palm
excuses I proffer—my veins throb so
in your presence—you deride lips smacking
on listless air my shroud
under a waiting sky, wilting
no one knows why
who but the heart
that knows knows when a smile
alights on a voice
who among the spaces senses
a smile as it wings its path to the heart
that knows
a flight quite swift aboard a voice still quite
mute its ring a sound only when it alights
on the heart that knows knows
what that smile knows knows its birth in the heart
only the heart that knows knows
why waiting
wilts the sky
Posted for One Shoot Sunday at One Stop Poetry from an image prompt by Rob Hanson in this inimitbale gathering place of poets and artists.Cenck us out. Better yet, hop in!
trimming the tree/winter full moon
1.
trimming the tree–
a cat’s frame
not a star
2.
winter full moon—
the missing napkin ring
beside the Star
–haiku for jornales friends with my wishes for the most of yours during this Christmas season and the new Year!
The lunar eclipse saluted us first, extravagantly, too, and the winter full moon sails on into our wishes among the constellations, sometimes witnessing for us who cannot see stars skidding through Light Years that will never be visible in our time. The secret in our lives is the moment, the moment lived whether fully or not, aware or not.
The moment I just learned on reading an issue of Poetry (December 2006) is thus the essence of all art. Art must not only capture it but live it for us the way we actually do but can’t fathom–in the hugeness of the universe and Time–until an artist does it for us.
You and I, newbie or master, implanted with the seed to let art blossom must take command–do we have a choice? You and I know we don’t have as it has taken over our souls, the deepset recesses of our being even, as I know from lines you generously leave here. Thank you–if I could but reinvent the word!
last winter in fornt of a dressed-up Vancouver Art Gallery when snow defaulted on Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympics
mementoes (when my haiku mutate into free verse)
through shedding arcs
up the sand hill down the slide
i make a short cut to my wedding
my veil tangled in a hail
of magnolia endings
six heads bob over the hedge but
a man selling balloons i pull up
a picture the sun
fades in my hand my ring turns
blue in autumn rain
i gawk on my mud-soaked feet
pigeons i startle whoosh up
spray the sky
as seagulls prancing stomp
on my impaled shadow
on my wall i let go of daylight
on the window ledge
my cabbage roses wilt
on leaf tips I glimpse my tears
dripping from my shredded heart
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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