haiku on the beach, tides, the sea (at NaHaiWriMo)
the sea in Ilocos Norte, the northermost province of the 7,100 islands of the Philippine archipelago, a scene I so miss. Photo by Raymond Ramos, a cousin in the 3rd degree,
a.
when shifting tides
shift the codes–
sunset
b.
secrets
digging into sand dunes–
a pale sunlight
c.
squalling seagulls–
scanning empty shorelines
for chances we’ve lost
d.
Cape Bojeador*–
we measure heights of billows
against our skies
*built by the Spaniards a lighthouse in Cape Bojeador in the northernmost tip of the Philippine archipelago juts out with a promontory as if into the sea where one may view giant waves crashing against each other and not only on high cliffs but mid-sea. On closer look at the waters, you may see a difference of hue—this is the point where the Pacific Ocean meets the China Sea, a truly stunning sight.
the bride (for One Shoot Sunday)
dawn
settles on her barefeet
a starling craving to
flex wings
the ground quivers
from her tender steps unease
spreads
among wet stones
she wiggles
off her restless sighs
to undo her veil of wind
her hair loosens
strands of singing
rise over the heartbeat
of sparrows
she becomes a pair of wings
shirred skirt
the feathers she preens
to a sheen that stuns
a hesitant sun
the day flexes
on her limbs a thrumming
wakens the tender
lilies she stalked in her dreams
she steps into
her gaping red shoes
the brooding crows
scatter
a ruckus spreads
among the dandelions
the seagulls catch in fevered
pitch
she walks
parting the congregation
in blindness deaf
to the grumbling
over the rise
among the pines she raises
her arms an arc
to the sky
a swallow
skimming the meadow
where heads limp in the breeze
but balloons from her wedding
the gulls shriek
it pierces her flight
she careens
down the hill snags
a thread of her dream
first a thump
of the wearied balloon
that pumped her wings
next her toes
like a bird poised to fly
in a fall
(c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
Photo prompt by Lauren Randolph
For One Shoot Sunday at One Shot Poetry, winner of the 2011 Shorty Award for the Arts. Come check us out and share your art and poetry–it’s what we do her, share and nurture each other.
Need to know why editor passed on these haiku
These haiku belong to a batch of 20 I recently submitted with temerity to what I call a ‘cutting-edge’ haiku journal. None was accepted, of course, although two interested the editor. Why? I can’t figure out on my own. Could you help me think this through? I reworked on three of them (1, 2 & 5) and did not include what got the editor’s eye.
1.
seagulls scanning tide marks
as if tasked
2.
competing with shadows
the winter wind
3.
salmon–
on winter clouds
a hue
4.
stepping into a fog
knowing
white also fades
5.
origami–
in her hands a crane
a smile
Origami crane folded from one uncut square of paper by Andreas Bauer courtesy of wikicommons
Lullaby (yet another lyric poem from haiku-strays)
I wrote this poem on one of the early days when obsessed with learning haiku, the form seemed to shape my brain–wherever that part is where words run into lines. This thought, this memory sparked after I wrote a personal essay that I submitted to Passager about my grandmother’s bath-hair washing ritual (“Digos: a ritual” also posted at my other blog, http://filipineses09.wordpress.com). The rhythm apparently timed in with my measured strides during my daily walk at the Inner Harbor in Baltimore where I lived then. Water, birds: seagulls, ducks, robins, ravens, orioles, sparrows; trees: conifers, chestnuts, magnolias; weeds: dandelions, clover, jewel weeds co-inhabited the dome–a span of sky. I walked daily toward dusk, which is why perhaps this poem—or haiku that strayed—is a lullaby.
grandma on a swing
flying on a lullaby–
a smile thin as breath
combing her hair, my fingers
the teeth untangling silk knots–
her tiara
cheeks I kiss–once
a cushion of veined organza
now loose ripples
Paloma, she warbles–
a dove, my name, alights
on her lips, flapping wings
moons chasing suns
sprout wings–in the darkness
whispers grow eyes
in her flight
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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