New works at Under the Basho: early darkness, winter dusk, on the verge, pale sunset, word storm,
early darkness —
the dough yields its breast
to my hands
cattails, January 2015
Under the Basho my personal best 2015
winter dusk—
we scoot over
for shadows
Under the Basho Stand-Alone hokku 2015
on the verge
of rocketing–
scent of silence
pale sunset
the blue heron’s
midlife
word storm
turning shadows
into a burden
Under the Basho modern haiku 2015
Night Scents: the truth about roses (for One Shot Wednesday)
Evening has fallen, tarnishing all translucence. Daffodils, for one, sprayed like comet behind a picket fence, are now turned-down copper bells. Magnolias, that crowd of plump cheeks on Warren Avenue, now doze on bruised faces.
Only dogwoods on front lawns seem to take evening fall with grace. Their crown, a dull mantle in daylight, has turned into iridescent lace while on the ground ivy has thickened, breathing like a ghost.
Not colors but scents have taken over life in the dying day. But nothing like vapors that seem solid like steam or fog or mist, just weightless molecules spinning in the air.
‘Fragrant’ seems paltry if it were to mean the scent of violets blindly met along a cypress hedge on Montgomery St.—a bouquet part spicy part sweet like a potion for a faint spirit. ‘Perfumed’ weighs gaudily on jasmine for its scent from a terrace on Battery St. descends as faint as a memory—fleeting like all moments that come back to haunt.
.
The nose, is it? Or perhaps the heart leads the nose to track down the scent of roses. Some flourish in unlikely spots; they trap the heart in a patch back of a kitchen on Riverside, for instance. Here, rose bushes wear open faces. No secret chambers there.
Even in the evening, rose blooms thrust up as if to sing—but not to sing, perhaps more to sigh. Listen then and breathe for in opening their lips, their scent also escapes. Note that only in the evening this truth about roses is revealed: their scent hints at sour drops and salt sprays, tears and regrets and the million contradictions lodged in the heart.
Copyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2009
Published in Eleventh Flash in the Pan at Tiny Lights magazine
Posted for One Shot Wednesday 53rd week at One Stop Poetry, that inimitable gathering place for poets and artists. Check out what we share and do hop in!
you and i in seven pieces (for One Shot Wednesday)
1.
a flower basket moon—
tilting from a swing of arms
in revolving doors
our sighs uncompleted in the eaves
a storm hanging by a cloud
2.
squalling gulls
rip our day in shreds–
the only sound
between us and the stones
and the dying flowers
3.
why the mimosa
shrinks in pain at our steps–
i search for your scent
you squint from its thorns
i sip drops of night dew
4.
darkness leaves us blind
we grope for our eyes but find
our lips like embers
on a bed of pebbles left to die–
we thrum like restless stars
5.
we reap our moaning
gather folds of reticent dawn
into my breast–
you slice away your pain
my flesh thins out in your hands
6.
i beg for the sun
lodged in the cleavage of morning–
you toss it flaming
your destiny line singed
the line of your heart scarred
7.
i lie in wait–
the next moon comes astride
the east wind raging
washing away whirlpools of dust
baring the sun i conceived
meringue
meringue—
the children’s laughter
rise in the air
My sister’s first experiment on making a perfect meringue prompted this haiku.
I never knew she has always loved it until she told me so before Christmas. And what pushed her to study recipes for it is the price of meringue, which apalled her when she learned how little goes into its making. What she had discovered and which apparently makes meringue pricey is the technique in beating the egg whites, the kind of sugar to use and how much, and the size of the oven. I glimpsed her putting in a baking sheet with tiny blobs on them before I turned back to water the fragile rose–the pitimini she insisted on getting last summer about which I expressed loud dire forecasts and which I’m now nurturing because I feel rueful for its pale shoots like the frail babies in pediatric clinics moms hold like wilting leaves.
I can’t recall how long it took when I began to smell a faint vanilla scent that soon overpowered the apartment. Her meringue has started rising like bleached hills–not quite as perfect as the bake shop displays she has coveted. She offered me a bite when they had cooled. I almost demured having almost sworn off sugar from my diet but I gave in.
I felt like a child as the bite melted into nothing but air in my mouth. I had two more. From the courtyard, the handful of children who have since been cooped up in the winter, burst out laughing for the first time. The air laced with vanilla scent rose like meringue–for me, at least and wrote itself into a haiku!