‘as wind skitters’ (my tanka adjudged ‘excellent’ in the 7th International Tanka Festival Competition)
My tanka adjudged ‘excellent’ among others well-known in the tanka sphere:
as wind skitters
through dry sedge
this thought
of shredded feathers
persistent
dry grass at English Bay, West End, Vancouver, BC
…at The 7th International Tanka Festival Competition, 2012 by Japan Tanka Poets’ Society, with 589 entries from all over the world that passed through the four judges: Jane Reichhold (U. S. A.), Beverley George (Australia), Yasuhiro Kawamura (Japan), and Aya Yuhki (Japan). Another tanka was adjudged ‘fine’.
CONGRATULATIONS to many friends in the terrific harvest!!!
My Most Beautiful Thing: an odd rainbow (so far)
(a haibun diary entry)
…the walk I had written you about did happen at a bird sanctuary estuary from the arm of the Fraser River that we know and a beach, first on foot paths that slithered among reeds and sedge grass taller than me, blushes of wild daisies with red hearts and knots like hairs on tips of red cloud weeds, getting wilder as the path deepened into the trees, the air singing with chirps and love calls or chatter rising from the thick clumps of more grass by the water’s edge—a gravel walk finally came to view and out of the canopy of brambles the sky spanned out with a swatch of pink, unlike the tender pink dabs we had waken some dawns but more like an odd rainbow of pinks we haven’t seen yet, straying from the sun’s aureole, but as if only for show because it began thinning out into a breath as the walk curved toward the river shore, same sands we would braid our steps on those mornings that summer a year ago and so, imagine me recalling us
sinking feet in the sand
we draw the tide line
closer to our morning
(My Most Beautiful Thing “blogsplash” celebrates Fiona Robyn’s new novel, The Most Beautiful Thing.)
‘from sedge’ haiga5 for haiga-a-day at 19 Planets Art Blog
from sedge haiga5
My fifth post for haiga-a-day challenge on Rick Daddario’s 19 Planets Art Blog. I’ve ventured this time into creating my own artwork. I’m saying so as a caveat for the crudeness of this watercolor attempt. I mentioned that I did dabble in drawing ages ago but never did get an actual training. I had thought that reading a lot for the writing I used to do and interviewing great Filipino artists would work a miracle in me–what improbable thought, no? I guess I still do think it’s possible and so my daring to post this haiga:
from sedge
to sedge no stalk
firm enough
to hold a wing–
damselflies
A five-line haiku? I’m not sure this is legitimate. And if not, consider this a draft then, along with the childlike drawing!
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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