time (one of three haiga at Notes from the Gean, March 2012)
One of three haiga at
Notes from the Gean 3:4 March 2012 (on my blogroll)
time
sifting through stones
for inconstancies
haiku: alegria imperial, canada
image: eleanor angeles, usa
trimming the tree/winter full moon
1.
trimming the tree–
a cat’s frame
not a star
2.
winter full moon—
the missing napkin ring
beside the Star
–haiku for jornales friends with my wishes for the most of yours during this Christmas season and the new Year!
The lunar eclipse saluted us first, extravagantly, too, and the winter full moon sails on into our wishes among the constellations, sometimes witnessing for us who cannot see stars skidding through Light Years that will never be visible in our time. The secret in our lives is the moment, the moment lived whether fully or not, aware or not.
The moment I just learned on reading an issue of Poetry (December 2006) is thus the essence of all art. Art must not only capture it but live it for us the way we actually do but can’t fathom–in the hugeness of the universe and Time–until an artist does it for us.
You and I, newbie or master, implanted with the seed to let art blossom must take command–do we have a choice? You and I know we don’t have as it has taken over our souls, the deepset recesses of our being even, as I know from lines you generously leave here. Thank you–if I could but reinvent the word!
last winter in fornt of a dressed-up Vancouver Art Gallery when snow defaulted on Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympics
now
I like this poem, its rhythm or just the sound of it when I read or recite it. It’s one of those for which I’d write myself a check of $1,000 for my “jornal”. What do you think?
now’s a sound, a
hacking
in space a rhythmic
splicing
a phantom hand
scythe upright
in greed
cutting in swaths
—its mode a sharp embrace:
no sweetness
there
now’s a push but no
sudden one, instead a
jabbing
in the skull
a stabbing not for blood
but eternal
jiggling swaggering
a relentless dribbling
of words and water to whet
though never—
that’s how it feeds
a pattern scissoring
now is
a space splitting blankness
into ‘then’
and ‘later ‘ bulking up
with what’s decayed
one row what’s nothing
the other
only now knows
a pulse but not
the kind on which
life hangs
now’s a beat that
threatens a breath
this fragile silk
now snaps in two
once the known now
the unknown
© Copyright 2007 by Alegria Imperial/Published in poetslane, iluko.com
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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abducted fireflies (haiga7 for 19 Planets Art Blog)
haiga7 for haiga-a-day made with clip art on Microsoft Publisher
abducted fireflies
glowing in its eyes
frog
Another post for Rick Daddario’s haiga-a-day challenge at 19 Planets Art Blog, which I created from a clip art on Microsoft Publisher.
And what’s behind the image of the frog? This…
Noticing what could be unseen or merely imagined, magnifying the significance of what would be otherwise, some speck lost in the swarm of air particulates, this is what poetry, especially haiku, does to me. My mind cannot seem to work within limitations of space and time, or even sensations. What’s beyond a simple object in a single moment becomes a truth that breaks through thought barriers. Take the frog.
Basho has immortalized its break out of anonymity with his famous haiku, ‘old pond’. Reading it again and again, one steps into the monastic peace of an old pond until a frog that one hardly notices among stones, plops, and animates the peace with the sound of water. In a moment, the old pond turns into a universal moment of any moment that once was lifeless, suddenly, breathing from the unexpected.
My haiga is hardly a takeoff from Basho’s frog. It does not have the quietness of it, nor of the objective quality that identifies the poet as the observer but in whose mind, reality is arranged into three lines that total into a truth. While an observation as well, mine is less objective in that I state what I suppose in what I see, namely, the glow in a frog’s eye–seen especially in the dark. Knowing what it feeds on, I imagine fireflies and connect it with that glow. In reality, it is far-fetched as we know that anything creatures eat ends up far from the eyes, in the stomach. If a glow ever shows in the eye, it is that of satisfaction. But what I have done here, or think so, anyway, is tweak reality and made it slide into poetic thought, some other truth.
September 16, 2011 Posted by alee9 | comment, haiga, haiku, poetry, reflection | 19 Planets Art blog, alegria imperial, Basho, clip art, creatures, Daily life, Daily wage, dark, eyes, fireflies, frog, haiga-a-day, haiku, haiku moment, jornales, Microsoft Publisher, objective, peace, pond, reality, Rick Daddario, sensations, sound of water, space, stomach, stones, time, unexpected, universal moment | 4 Comments