being there/refracted twilight (my haibun at LYNX)

being there

…it is the rhythm that’s constant it seems and not the stillness—the way the wind pulls and withdraws and the way the leaves sway and retract or how the clouds gather into masses and then dissipate into air or is it merely the eye that misses the jagged movements and edges and catches merely that moment when the rhythm shows and reassures us as in the constancy of flowers even as petals begin to brown and curl in the edges and fall, stripping the branches of their name because all we recall is their being there as in moments we have flowed into still flow into like on our early morning walks when

shifting tides–

the river unloading burdens

for us to decode

refracted twilight

…first time ever that twilight struck me as that almost sacred time when the day tears away to let night slip in, how the bleeding sunset fades into lemon yellow to shell white so much so that facing west where the light seems to turn down as in a timer heartbeat by heartbeat, the houses, trees and flowers even weeds become solid walls of darkness—no punctured points on twigs, no dancing spaces between leaves—but haven’t I watched this on my daily walks long ago back in Harbor Hill but then, the roosting sparrows and the first star on tips of pines pulled my steps back to ruminate and settling in, twilight would be for us that time when

first star—

we turn down the darkness

on our own sky

(excerpts from a diary)

LYNX XXVII:I February 2012

Nine for NaHaiWriMo (copying, rewriting some old haiku of mine)

National Haiku Writing Month (NaHaiWriMo)–that’s what’s going on. I don’t know if we have to sign up and join a ‘marathon’ but I’ve taken it up anyway. What I have here for the past nine days though isn’t honest, I mean, not fresh–freshened up is more like it. I scrounged around for them from rejects of submissions and buffed them up. And so, the kigo is mixed–there’s autumn, winter, spring and summer here. Still, I know some of them or most of them aren’t ‘good haiku’ but like most of what I write, they transform into something else after a while. I don’t really write a haiku a day; when I do, it’s often up to ten or more. So, here are my take for NaHaiWriMO counted from day one. I hope to make the kigo right for the month of February in the next two weeks.

1.
empty nest
scrapes an ivy wall–
broken silence

2.
crow cawing
over shuttered houses
pierces my thoughts

3.
delayed arrival—
a hat bobs over the hedge
the wrong way

4.
lit up skies–
so many darkened doors
shushed walls

5.
twilight–
she kneels
to smell a rose

6.
winter thought–
on a window
a trickle

7.
stalactites–
her stubborn reply
scribbled

8.
raindrops
on an evening window–
what’s unsaid

9.
crescent moon–
his silence
his droopy eyes

the copper sea (for One Shoot Sunday)

the sun sets copper
on the sea swarming over
desert longings
lapping our dreams

on our footprints
a heat rises on ghosts
of foam cresting
for the stars

the sand sinks
death our sun desires
drained on our footprints
unquenched

no shadows lurk
here the light fractures
the pining twilight
leaves splinters

on the sand
the copper sea turns in
a petulant phantom
on our footprints

unwashed silted

footprints by Iquanyin Moon

Posted for One Shoot Sunday at One Stop Poetry, a community of poets and artists who love their art and sustain each other.

the kiss (for One Shoot Sunday)

*composed from a picture prompt, a photo by Lisa Michelle Arhonditis, at One Stop Poetry blog’s One Shoot Sunday

among the willows we waited
for the wind to calm down—
the wind sometimes listens
to our whispers
and steals from ripples of the lake
our secret sighs

on our way back
a ruckus of the sparrows
in the lilac bush
sunk into the twilight—
we waited for the darkness
to open up for the moon

the night slipped in
more silken than cherry blossoms
more fragile than a wing tip
as innocent as a star–
then your kiss birthed a galaxy
swirling us to infinity

I posted this poem for One Shoot Sunday at the One Stop Poetry blog.

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