summer dusk

summer dusk (a symbiotic poem) 

Always, a loon scours the river shore with me. We dip into indentations of footprints. Share secrets we unravel: the scalloped lips of shells, the broken ribs of fish, the names we name stones. We use no words. The loon thinks he sings, his song always a dirge. I sigh on endless waves, my sighs fragile as peace. We count our regrets on fingers of evergreens, codes a river will never understand. At sunset, the loon spreads its wings to scoop the sun. I let loose my hair in strands to make a web. We wait.

summer dusk
a spider gnaws
at the sunset

LYNX 28:1 February 2013

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being there/refracted twilight (my haibun at LYNX)

being there

…it is the rhythm that’s constant it seems and not the stillness—the way the wind pulls and withdraws and the way the leaves sway and retract or how the clouds gather into masses and then dissipate into air or is it merely the eye that misses the jagged movements and edges and catches merely that moment when the rhythm shows and reassures us as in the constancy of flowers even as petals begin to brown and curl in the edges and fall, stripping the branches of their name because all we recall is their being there as in moments we have flowed into still flow into like on our early morning walks when

shifting tides–

the river unloading burdens

for us to decode

refracted twilight

…first time ever that twilight struck me as that almost sacred time when the day tears away to let night slip in, how the bleeding sunset fades into lemon yellow to shell white so much so that facing west where the light seems to turn down as in a timer heartbeat by heartbeat, the houses, trees and flowers even weeds become solid walls of darkness—no punctured points on twigs, no dancing spaces between leaves—but haven’t I watched this on my daily walks long ago back in Harbor Hill but then, the roosting sparrows and the first star on tips of pines pulled my steps back to ruminate and settling in, twilight would be for us that time when

first star—

we turn down the darkness

on our own sky

(excerpts from a diary)

LYNX XXVII:I February 2012

browning river (NaHaiWriMo post)

browning river
I turn woolens inside out
for hemming

prompt: new beginning

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!

I was once her (for one Shot Wednesday)

who sits on the couch in the music room
lost in autumn hair, violins on a CD player
wafting smiles not hers, smiles of a piquant woman
her lover lost on the river walk that evening
briar roses crumbled on their steps shredded
foliage cushioned.

She sits on vacant clouds, eyes
hinting wakefulness on pools
the sun once mirrored
then drowned. The geese left no sign
that evening of the walk not even a note
to hold up to a sun sinking on the barge:
logs swayed on the water, old men rasped
scraping brawns the tide whittled,

bumping to the rhythm. She hears
her lover hum the tune,
a river whistling in the runes, flowing
infinitely like words in
a vow: in this and that state
no breath in between
but death. Not geese but iron flies
buzzing into her heart shattered

the pool that afternoon, shards of water
blinding her her lover saying good-bye, to fly
on blades that whirl not wings that beat
on air, to return an angel, breast beribboned
to preen to count those fallen
from his fingers.
She peers through her cloud this afternoon:
a river ebbing at her feet, touching

her wiggling toes, she giggles over
silly notes as violins rise, twirling
allegro on the river bank where she once sat
mourning over geese that afternoon
her lover returned a name
in a note unsigned, the lover

who once was mine.

Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry, the gathering place of poets and artists yet unmatched in calibre and talent. I’m a follower here. Do check us out!

Shuffled seasons (for One Shoot Sunday)

photo prompt by Greg Laychak

The narrow aisle flows a river to a wall
Of white thought

What squares of light have no glow
On the surface of water?

Who spawns the flat bed of dreams my steps
Struggle to cover?

Imprisoned by air I breathe a stale paradise
Of jasmine blossoms

I hear the rain a hissing of limbs on trees
But the moon does not rise

Day ends at my door night turns the stars
Upside down

‘”Where is your walker?” “Excuse moi?” What tongue
Speaks in this land?

“You cannot leave without it?” “Why, who’s heading out?”
The grubs I picked wriggle

In my closed fist I am growing a butterfly
No one knows

In my bareness I feel drenched in dew my bones
Misaligned rattle

“Now let’s go back in.” “Who has left her?”
No one comes today

I draw a caul on the day withdraw into night
Retrieve what’s lost

The sign posts melt on the flowing river
My hair long undone

I shuffle the seasons: in my eyes autumn leaves fall
But cherry blossoms

Oh, he rises to me my cane I draw my arms a lover
Now my wings

Copyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2011

Written with an image prompt by Greg Laychak for One Shoot Sunday at One Stop Poetry, winner of the 2011 Shorty Award for the Arts, the inimitable gathering place for poets and artists. Share with us as we do ours your art or poetry and your thoughts. Check us out.

To write a poem (wordplay on an old typewriter for One Shoot Sunday)

image prompt by Jack AZ part2

is not to catch
the words unlatched:

it is to meet
a current against the sweep

against the words
the patterns on the board

the words imprint
that later fade so like river silt.

To catch a poem
you can’t, unless eyes firm

eyes glued to the vaulted
deep from where had bolted

these words you unleash
on lines that leap

your fingers balancing
thought on words that slink.

To catch the thought
that storms into desert draught

you choose the speed
or letters scrambling in the deep

delude the eyes
escape the mind on ice

old keys do creak when cranked
to catch the lines unlatched.

To catch a storm wreaking
havoc on a heart sinking

in a slew of silted dreams
rusting on dredged streams

where winds howl threats
of maddened sand and dust like breaths

the finger tips must kiss
the letters naming muses hissing.

To catch the muses
soothe their caricatured faces

bare your soul salvaged
from old thoughts once baggage

tear out the paper
spewing lies of hereafter

catch the words that spell
the truth about their names true to their spell

on you to write a poem.

Posted for One Shoot Sunday at One Stop Poetry where a community of poets and artists share their love for their art and continue to sustain each other. Check us out!

heron’s splash (published tanka)

heron’s splash
on river marsh rocking
the sound of water –
a mountain of wash
after he left home

First published in LYNX XXIII:3, October 2008

This tanka was first returned to me with a lovely note from the editor of a tanka journal, telling me to read more on the art form, work on writing it and perhaps submit again. She said though that first attempts don’t usually make it, nor the second ones. After reading a lot on tanka, I was convinced I wrote mine true to its form and so, I pushed my luck. I submitted the same batch to LYNX and lucked out on three of them getting accepted, one of them, the above.

dawn by the river

dawn by the river–

we breach a wall of sand

the cry of a loon