‘fox moon’, a tanka sequence at Yay Words on ‘fox dreams’
fox moon
must it always be
this light
that draws your anguish
so feared so misunderstood?
your paws
on thawing banks the tracks
you left for me
as if I’ve lost you in
the moon’s shifting moods
silence
the midnight wind sends
you howling
always you miss my whispers
shushing your longings
in dappled shadows
the fire burns in your eyes
singes rustling leaves
you step in the moonlight
where we lay down your embers
come out of hiding
what greater fate is there
that awaits
than for us to bare our desires
we live for this and this alone
Thrilled to share my first in Aubrie Cox’s creative blog, Yay Words, included in a collection of poems by 34 known and published haiku/tanka poets on ‘fox dreams’. So honored to have my work alongside theirs. Thanks again to Aubrie for this wonderful project. Check it out at http://yaywords.wordpress.com/2012/04/22/fox-dreams/ Or click on ‘Yay Words’ on my blogroll.
Image of silver fox courtesy of wikipedia commons, photo by Zefram
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!
me to Shiki:/how far can i go/with haiku? (his possible answers)
heron at lake courtesy of wikicommons
me to Shiki:
how far can i go
with haiku?
his possible answers
heron equals
stillness
***
stillness–
we break the rules
***
nothing moves in the pond–
turtle
***
plum tree–
only when it blooms
***
only lotus flowers
in the pond
***
wind to bamboo:
how far
can whispers go?
the wait (TCR issue 51 for One Shot Wednesday)
on the window
the bird seed beveled
a choppy morning
where the soughing wind
mimics whispers
snagged among caricature
of trees
ruined by the rain
shredded under steps
leaves trapped in gutters—
thoughts flung on
rain puddles where the rain
drops as rings blurring
the sky
in the lilac bush
the ruckus of the sparrows
sinks into the sunset
in the brambles a spider web sags—
we wait for the darkness
to open up for the moon
Copyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
Published at The Cortland Review Issue 51 May 2011
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry. Check out this site wher poets share their love for their art and nurture each other.
me to Shiki:/how far can i go/with haiku? (and his possible answers)
heron at lake courtesy of wikicommons
me to Shiki:
how far can i go
with haiku?
(his possible answers)
heron equals being still
***
stillness–
we break the rules
***
not a stir in the pond–
turtle
***
cherry blossoms–
what’s wrong with fruits?
***
plum tree
only when it blooms
***
the jade Buddha laughs
long after sunset
***
wind to bamboo:
how far
can whispers go?
plea for a poem (for One Shot Wednesday)
write me a poem
words to breathe in
even if only whispers
as shouts have turned
the air into a
hail storm
write me some rain–
my heart crackles
in the draught longing
for words drenched in
thought to sip
in the dark
i yearn for verses
snipped from flame tips
words that dance
the fire of fallen angels
saved from their march
on dying coals
write me a song
cadenced in sunsets
tympanis of words
rising off the hum
of meanings
drums have flattened
give me back poems
shredded spirits birth
in caves midnights cleanse–
poems howling wolves
hankering for stars
divine
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry as my share in a lively exchange of art and poetry among a loving community of poets and artists who nurture each other. Follow us at the site. Click on OSP on my blogroll.
Tanka? Lady Nyo replies to my plea (and tanka from haikuverse to here)
Two reasons why this re-post but more: First, at Red Dragonfly, my friend Melissa Allen’s blog, in her Lucky 13 edition of haikuverse, I read an intense discussion on tanka. I’ve been a tanka-pretender of late because a few of my tanka-ish (because they are in truth free verses) poems have been quite successful. Reading more on it though pulled me in deeper into the mist, into fog/understanding fades/–smoky white thickens. (By the way, if you wish to grow and expand as a haiku poet, follow Red Dragonfly, on my blogroll, especially her flights in the haikuverse.)
Second, I met Lady Nyo in cyberspace, at One Stop Poetry to be exact, through my post the other day, which I’ve pulled out here to include her reply to my plea that she take a look at my tanka. She kindly did and what a lesson I got using my tanka. My ignorance or better yet, bull-headedness, not paying attention to details of what I read about the art–honestly, I often gloss over most discussions and plunge straight into the poems–was bared. Her discussion of tanka through my attempts in this post has waken me up, bolting upright to seriously study it. Arigato gozaimas, Lady Nyo!
Here is my Valentine post of 5 after-the-classical tanka and 3 of my-own-version of modern tanka:
Could these five tanka attempts I wrote after rereading cover to cover Thomas Gurgal’s Japanese Tanka: The Court Poetry of a Golden Age mentioned twice here and Lady Nyo’s almost intimately written background on tanka writing be tanka? Lady Nyo and the tanka book I found at the Vancouver Public Library describe tanka written during the Heian dynasty. It’s the topic today on One Stop Poetry where I’m posting the following tanka. I did imagine myself as a lady of the court, scribbling notes for a lover but still I’m not certain. Could these be tanka?
1.
The roses you sent
I kissed each petal like lips
your vows blossoming–
Were you here I would ask again
Is your love unlike roses?
2.
In my hand your note
takes wings with my heart
I fly to you tonight–
Will the moon you promised
meet me among stars I bring?
3.
We sit under stars
skidding in the hemispheres
you make me wish
I whisper to the willows this:
Bring his wish to the winds
4.
Before I knew you
I wrote a poem on love
now you declare love
I am losing my poem
in my fluttering heart
5.
Will you be sad
you ask me like a songbird
singing to no one
you took my name and my heart
neatly tied in your knapsack
Three tanka–my own–of which I must ask the same question, could this be tanka? My subject is the same, yes, it’s on love but not courtly love. I also followed the structure but just can’t be certain. Would you tell me?
1.
driving into fog
our hearts in our hands–
same hands
scribbling secret codes
our midnight whispers
2.
under frozen skies
oriole songs fill a dome–
divining our dawns
the path our suns travel
distances our longing defy
3.
the full moon stalls
listening to midnight whispers–
skidding stars
spark the skies our eyes
on nothing else but ours
Lady Nyo’s reply to my plea:
I want to clear something up. Tanka isn’t only about love: it’s a vehicle to carry a message about mourning, praise, grief, death (as in Death Poems from Samurai) observations on nature, etc. So we should broaden our attempts at tanka to partake of so many themes.
I think these top 5 are very much in the tanka form. As to spirit? Yes, they are.
However, I do see a difference in the Court tanka, the more immediate tanka in something like the “Man-yoshu”…where the romantic sentiment is a bit more complex. It’s just different and this is hard to explain without a study of it.
But we aren’t Heian court women poets…we are modern women poets, and that ‘sensibility’ is very different I believe now.
The last three are lovely freeverse to me. What is missing here is the syllable count: 5-7-5, etc. If you read the romanji script…the original Japanese tanka, you see, by sounding it out that these tanka follow this form. They don’t necessarily stray from it because it is a discipline and has a purpose.
Tanka is to be read in two breaths. However, the top five very much carry correctly that important Kakekotoba, that pivot or bridge between the top poem (Kami no ku) and the bottom poem (Shimo no ku)
This is what is most hard (well, one of those hard things) in tanka to pull off…the unifying but also the recognition of tanka being actually TWO poems.
It takes a lot of work, process and study to begin to be ‘easy’ in this formation.
But we will get there. This is a good start.
Lady Nyo
We continued our discussion at Lady Nyo’s weblog (click on the blogroll) on the ‘elusive’ spirit of tanka as well as haiku. Next Tuesday at One Stop Poetry, Lady Nyo has promised to discuss the ‘two poems’ in a tanka.
Window Frame (One Shot Wednesday)
She peers again. Light birthed
in snow has blossomed wings on
branches, an evening suspended on a hand.
The mist curls fingers at her, drawing her–
she hears magic bedded in whispers, magic
that melts on footfalls then trails a sigh, seeps
into thoughts, waking dormant ghosts.
She holds on, clutches on—time
has framed her waiting: even snow birds
scattered on the gravel have turned into leaves,
the light, a wash neither rain-lit nor
breeze-hushed, folding on itself. Frost
has coated the window frame where
she gazes wondering if her eyes
not the stars belong to the night—
her world illumined by the absence
of light, nourished in waiting
for the snow in his wake. Waiting
she wonders if absent stars not
the snow flakes on this window frame
have deluded him
to search for other skies.
Posted for One Shot Wednesday. Join other poets at One Stop Poetry blog who write verses for love, read those of others, leave a word of encouragement and/or insight with the same love and respect. Post your piece on your blog and sign up in the Mr. Linky list.
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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