A haiku trio on the sky
forlorn sky
a kitten’s inaudible
mewling
fog horn
across the beach
injured clouds
dream catcher
the shifting colours
of rain
Just a heart (a haibun)
I honor the Force who/that sowed the seed who became me. In degrees though often unaware, I grew a heart.
from rumblings a sprout answers to a name
Lashed by winds, bathed by rains, kissed by moonrise, swaddled by fog, cradled by dawns, how can I be less than a song
neither eye nor lips the knowing sky
They say I leave footprints, scents, echoes, a ghost prowling with the fox for a lair, yet no one says my name
far off foghorns for every one
(My response, originally posted as a comment, to Dan Hasse’s powerful haibun at Facebook: thank you, Dan!!)
My offering for International Haiku Poetry Day 2015 today
mornings
in the language of camellias…
moonrise too soon
my flight
prompted by a unicorn–
blue mountains
peel by peel
the moon in my palm
a heart
serenade
with a sleight of his hand
a lilac sky
unveiled
a cascade of apple blossoms
in the widow’s breast
My haiku in Sketchbook 7 “pond life” kukai thread March/April 2012
1.
breathless
between us in the pond bed
a gold carp
2.
still pond
a mirror the span
of our wings
3.
tadpoles
we slink around sun spears
in dappled lagoons
4.
virgin’s halo
in the punctured pond
a rock shard sinks
5.
skinny dipping
with our burdens
pond turtle
6.
plop
the sound of bubble
from a carp
7.
stretching its neck
as if to measure our sky
turtle
Editor’s choice with commentary:
Bernard Geitske the temptation to philosophize or explore one’s being is very strong
8.
dry sedge
i wonder if dragonflies
remember
9.
the miles
a water stryder covers
my mirrored sky
Editor’s choice
John Daleiden for “a potpourri of nature”
Bernard Gietske for “beautiful pictures, still and action shots one might find”
10.
mayflies in the pond
the persistence of clouds
to stay
‘pine strand’ one of 365 haiku on your mobile phone
Read a haiku-a-day on your mobile phone. Yes, simply access your haiku app and anyone of the 365 haiku would show up as you click or shake your screen. You might read mine:
pine strand
flailing in night sky—
the first low star
Alegria Imperial
Lynx XXIII (2008)
The Haiku Foundation Haiku app Data Base 2012
sea froth (my 340th post)
scraping
bottom to reach sky high
sea froth
It’s my 340th post! I never thought I’d get this far. But my fascination with poetry, especially haiku and other forms of Japanese poetry, has since turned into something akin to obsession, or it is already. None of my efforts to learn more and strive for better written lines would be for nothing without you, dear friends, followers and readers. If words do not fall on ground and felt, these turn into dust. But you’ve breathed half of the life I did to them. Thank you all!
figuring out
One more for NaHaiWriMo on Stella Pierides’ weather prompt. Autumn, one of my favorite seasons, has figured out in quite a number of my haiku and free verse. The colors fascinate me no end, coming from a country where trees turn brown only if they finally die with no blaze of reds and golds. And when after autumnal winds strip the trees of leaves in a crazed dance, their bareness transform the landscape into pencil drawings where I find myself wandering, looking for the now lost sky. Under oak trees once, this haiku came.
November sky haiga (Manhattan skyline from the Hudson at Riverbank State Park)
November sky
we fling our shadows
among clouds
haiku: alegria imperial
photo: eleanor angeles
three ‘starry night’ haiku (extras from Sketchbook submission)
1.
starry night
Venus sputters last
where to this time?
2.
eyes on the sky
is it them that cause
this starry night?
3.
cleaver
must it be moon-less
a starry night?
dreamscape and other haiku on space at NaHaiWriMo
shooting star–
wish I didn’t know
who you are
dreamscape–
where the sun turns away
and the moon rises
infinity–
vow before it’s broken
(not with NaHaiWriMo)
sky–
a breath cirrocumulus
leave for the moon
in the dark
streak of light behind windows–
someone waiting?
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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