unfinished tales (for One Shoot Sunday)
photo prompt by Neil Alexander
at nightfall
a herded flock of sheep bearing
flasks of prayers
bleat on their steps
toward the temple
in the distance
crows scream for mercy
the broken tower
unleashes bats sniggering
at the sheep
in the darkness
the owl hoots at a pregnant moon
who smiles at shrinking Mars
the stars in his court simpering
conspire with the moon
in the thorny bushes
men braid their way into the night
on their heads their gifts
wobble like heads of wearied gods
once revered
seething fireflies their pin eyes
darting among snoring bees
beguile the men
who mesmerized by the light
melt on their knees
spirits splatter
on yesterday’s thorns turned
night embers burning the temple
far off where prayers thicken
barnacled walls
Dawn fans the dying
souls of the moaning sheep
and the whimpering men
the bats coat the temple tower
with their leavings
on the altar awaiting gifts
the gods disentangle
their limbs but leave their hearts
to morning worshippers
hankering for unfinished tales
Posted for One Shoot Sunday at One Stop Poetry, the gathering place that has been the most fertile ground for my poetry where among the most talented poets and artists whose invaluable nurturing caused me to wildly bloom. I thank Adam, Chris G, Claudia, Pete and Brian’s endless unfailing smiles who are leaving OSP and especially Joy and Jenne, goddesses of the lyrical realm for me, for my growth. Thanks especially for the Sunday page, Chris and Adam, these have driven me to work on original pieces I could never have written. It has been for me a blast of 28 weeks and as you had promised Adam, Chris, Claudia and Brian, I hope to meet you again or please seek me out when you are orbiting in the spheres again! I really can’t thank your enough for your support and uplifting words about each poem I’ve written for OSP.
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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