How I tackled Alan Summers’ prompts at NaHaiWriMo last May
Here’s a week of responses to Alan Summers’ prompts at the NaHaiWriMo (National Haiku Writing MOnth, which Michael Dylan Welch created at Facebook three years ago). YES, definitely, a daily challenge to write haiku has cranked up my mind or better yet, like a fit body, oiled it to resiliency. Writing with a group on cyberspace without the politics of bodily presence and its complications of commitments, has also made me fearless about risking my inadequacies–this turned out to be the secret to finding out who I am as a haiku poet as my lines do reveal. But who this is, until now, I can’t put it in a word…perhaps you can! Here then for you to enjoy, I hope.
#05/07/13 (green/gold/gone )
lunar eclipse—
his eyes on her frayed
jeans front
shattered eye what’s left of her mirror
gold leaf saint—
his indifferent stare
#05/06/13 (found as implied)
petal gust–
the street flutist’s
scrambled notes
under her hat…
the missing stubbles
tunnel spigot …the broken loo
fan tail on second thought
pointed fingers his guilt in black nails
#05/05/13 (echo)
weaving
through a cross stitch
of their argument…
her echo
spring echo–
the baby confronts
a Buddha
echo–
he smiles to his own smile
his other smile
#05/04/13 (den)
behind
the den mother’s back…
murmuring cubs
den of iniquity he finds his own sky
reeking of prey the fox’s den
#05/03/13 (curve)
the curve in her thighs wind chart
Lothario–
the river curves
out by rote
curved furrows a worried moon
05/02/13 (blue)
blue dawn…
the rain’s last phrase
on a glass pane
05/01/13 (asperity)
next I look…
the staccato scratching
of his rake
tea rings in my cup the grumbling darkness
on gravel
a day moon’s
sniffle
some of my spring haiku with French translation by Serge Tome@tempslibres.org
gray spring dawn-
the shiver of daffodils
in my bones
aube grise de printemps –
le frisson des jonquilles
dans mes os
this cold-
Sakura cherry blossoms
on my window
ce froid –
fleurs de cerisiers Sakura
à ma fenêtre
this sunless spring day
chickadees chatter on-
my indecisions
ce jour de printemps sans soleil
les mésanges discutent –
mes indécisions
watching rain
drum beat on window pane–
the deaf cat
il regarde la pluie
tambouriner sur la vitre —
le chat sourd
spring fever–
shoots among the lilies
she can’t name
fièvre de printemps —
des pousses parmi les lys
qu’elle ne peux nommer
tempslibres.org
winter trees (haiga)
winter trees
waiting on the silence
our breaths
(with my snap shot of Grouse Mountain, Vancouver from the lift last spring)
crocus buds (my haiku at THN)
crocus buds–
secrets we’ve kept
from each other
The Heron’s Nest, Volume XIII, Number 2: June 2011
a romance diary (a haibun experiment) for One Shot Wednesday
…grey dense skies barring the sun again, chilly on bare skin, spring refusing to leave so much so that even the leafing maple shading the terrace has browned with curled edges in spots, mistaking the air has retracted to autumn, perhaps? Even Nature seems dazed but I’m clear about this memory
spring’s end–
the squirrel flies a trapeze
as we cuddle
…amazing how the sun weakens on spring air yet its sparks illumine all else as in this thought filled in
a weak sun
glitters on spider web–
vacant corners
…even main street breathing unevenly at night has ceased in its restlessness as if the air has suffused all else to a quiet that for me opens up to reach out if it were but a soft turn in sleep when
mute stars–
spaces in between them
open up for whispers
…the night has bounced back in restlessness from a momentary calm which lulled me earlier in a dreamless space but awake now, recalling nights when I would feel lost, feeling an empty space on your side of the bed, but only briefly as you slip back in to turn back
the night
but for the darkness
our roost
…perhaps because they have built their nests, the birds seem to sing a different tune, refrains that rise this morning over the distant grumbling of jets flying off as I compose our song for another day
waning spring–
the wind rearranges petals
tightening us together
An edited version of an earlier post for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry, the only gathering place that brings poets and artists to share their art freely, comfortably, and joyfully and nurture each other. Check us out!
spring breeze/haze/blind alley (random haiku for the day)
spring breeze–
nothing but a touch
from a wisteria tip
haze–
when out of the bushes
a squirrel leaps
blind alley–
between your word and mine
a wrong turn
stillness: water as prompt (haiku from my wall at the NaHaiWriMo site)
1.
stillness–
the lotus the pond
and the sky
2.
rain
on tear-stained cheeks
cleansing over and over
March 30 NahaiWriMo profile (facebook)
Wish you were here!
Today, I’ll be with Vicki McCullough, Jessica Tremblay and Angela Naccarato–we of the Vancouver Haiku Group–and YES, Michael Dylan Welch at Van Dusen Gardens here in Vancouver, BC for the opening of Sakura Japan Days. We have a table for haiku enthusiasts or for those just curious at the Floral Hall. We expect to follow ginko walks with Michael as well as lead some ourselves. He will be on stage for a haiku reading tomorrow. I’ll be there again tomorrow. We also expect to pin on a wall curtain selected haiku we’ve written on Japan.
Wish you were here!
soft rain/spring wind/white dust (spring memories haiku)
soft rain–
she spins a ball
from memories
spring wind
on nodding daffodils–
my ‘No’ again
white dust
on boxes of three years–
still wind
fee bay feebaaayy…for me, chickadee (love call haiku)
fee bay feee baaayy–
filling the air with love calls
for me, chickadee
spring panic
spring panic–
ruckus of the sparrows
over petals shedding
spring–
his promise in a box
i open too late
I better stop here or I start writing ‘yikes-haiku’! Panic over the ticking clock is what’s wrong with me. Nothing comes to mind. I need to wind down now for an early start to be at the Buddhist temple in Richmond tomorrow for a ginko walk with members of the Vancouver Haiku Group–us!
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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