…recalcitrant stars and what to me is this haiku moment?
soft rain at dusk
on white magnolias–
recalcitrant stars
What to me is this haiku moment? For me, soft rain at dusk transports thoughts into a magical dimension where reality merges with the unseen. The eye then blurs and in a blink opens to a patch of the universe often easily called poetic moment, one that frees the mind of fences or the masonry of reason. In this haiku, I slipped from the real–soft rain on white magnolias and invisible stars on a dense gray sky–to a confrontation with the galaxies. The stars as in all Nature exist as themselves outside of me but I with a universe within me siphon them with my emotions; in this haiku, I imagine them protesting to descend and touch, perhaps, even kiss the oh, so alluring open-faced magnolias. And not them but the rain is made to fall on infinitesimal lips they imprint as crystal beads in the petals. The haiku for me is a collision of beauty and our imperfect desires, which I projected to the stars. Hence, it must end with just that moment, that tension I feel between the stars grumbling over Nature’s laws, my own recalcitrance over my finiteness really.
Posted for One Shot Wednesday at the inimitable One Stop Poetry, a gathering place for poets and artists, winner of the 2011 Shorty Award for the Arts. Check us out.
Shuffled seasons (for One Shoot Sunday)
photo prompt by Greg Laychak
The narrow aisle flows a river to a wall
Of white thought
What squares of light have no glow
On the surface of water?
Who spawns the flat bed of dreams my steps
Struggle to cover?
Imprisoned by air I breathe a stale paradise
Of jasmine blossoms
I hear the rain a hissing of limbs on trees
But the moon does not rise
Day ends at my door night turns the stars
Upside down
‘”Where is your walker?” “Excuse moi?” What tongue
Speaks in this land?
“You cannot leave without it?” “Why, who’s heading out?”
The grubs I picked wriggle
In my closed fist I am growing a butterfly
No one knows
In my bareness I feel drenched in dew my bones
Misaligned rattle
“Now let’s go back in.” “Who has left her?”
No one comes today
I draw a caul on the day withdraw into night
Retrieve what’s lost
The sign posts melt on the flowing river
My hair long undone
I shuffle the seasons: in my eyes autumn leaves fall
But cherry blossoms
Oh, he rises to me my cane I draw my arms a lover
Now my wings
Copyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
Written with an image prompt by Greg Laychak for One Shoot Sunday at One Stop Poetry, winner of the 2011 Shorty Award for the Arts, the inimitable gathering place for poets and artists. Share with us as we do ours your art or poetry and your thoughts. Check us out.
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
Need to know why editor passed on these haiku
These haiku belong to a batch of 20 I recently submitted with temerity to what I call a ‘cutting-edge’ haiku journal. None was accepted, of course, although two interested the editor. Why? I can’t figure out on my own. Could you help me think this through? I reworked on three of them (1, 2 & 5) and did not include what got the editor’s eye.
1.
seagulls scanning tide marks
as if tasked
2.
competing with shadows
the winter wind
3.
salmon–
on winter clouds
a hue
4.
stepping into a fog
knowing
white also fades
5.
origami–
in her hands a crane
a smile
Origami crane folded from one uncut square of paper by Andreas Bauer courtesy of wikicommons
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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