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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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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