Window by window and We (two ‘tiny’ haibun at Prune Juice)
Window by window
She peels her mornings. A miser of darkness, she lets the sun in by strands. I saw her once. She is a flower.
at the cusp
of Cancer and Leo
a fire wheel
We
We write our names together. It’s marriage says the book. Our meals apart. It’s work. We feed different nights. In different skies. What then is it?
cross wind—
cliffs echoing
wrong echoes
prune juice November 2014
ice cream/day moon my voted haiku at the June 2012 Shiki Kukai
Kigo*: ice cream
ice cream
the prescription
she misplaced
(5 points)
Free format: day moon
day moon
hovering on her window
a Luna moth
(8 points}
*A kigo is a season word entered into a data base that if used expands a haiku with a wider sense shared worldwide. Most kigo words are found in the World Kigo Database. While it lists predominantly Japanese season words, as is understandable, Gabi Greve who maintains WKD has been inviting haiku poets to contribute kigo in their locale, hence, further widening the data base. WKD is easy to access on the web.
A kukai is a prompted haiku exercise wherein participants (only) vote anonymously from an anonymous list of haiku with votes limited only to a total of 6 votes. This kukai is named after another Japanese haiku master, Shiki.
some of my spring haiku with French translation by Serge Tome@tempslibres.org
gray spring dawn-
the shiver of daffodils
in my bones
aube grise de printemps –
le frisson des jonquilles
dans mes os
this cold-
Sakura cherry blossoms
on my window
ce froid –
fleurs de cerisiers Sakura
à ma fenêtre
this sunless spring day
chickadees chatter on-
my indecisions
ce jour de printemps sans soleil
les mésanges discutent –
mes indécisions
watching rain
drum beat on window pane–
the deaf cat
il regarde la pluie
tambouriner sur la vitre —
le chat sourd
spring fever–
shoots among the lilies
she can’t name
fièvre de printemps —
des pousses parmi les lys
qu’elle ne peux nommer
tempslibres.org
closer to nothing (NaHaiWriMo prompt on natural disaster)
St. Andrew's Parish Church tower, Bacarra, Ilocos Norte, Philippines
closer to nothing
under its shrinking shadow–
Bacarra tower*
Ooops!! 5-7-5, sorry Michael! Didn’t mean to. But just to share for now…
*brick and mortar tower in my hometown where according to legend, a Spanish royal guard could ride on horseback through the stairs inside of it, bearing the red and gold colors to the third window. This baroque tower built on ‘obras pias’ (alternate tribute of hard labor by the natives) in the 1800s completed toward the end of that century, was known to be the tallest in the archipelago so much so that its domed tip could be seen towns away and the toll of its enormous bells could be heard amid the raging South China sea. Its top window broke during a massive earthquake in the 1930s (can’t recall the exact date) with its dome humbled onto the fracture. With each earthquake, quite frequent in the Philippines, the dome would be crunched lower and lower until another strong one pushed it off its precarious perch to fall on the ground. Ruins of its first window from its base of brick and mortar are all that remains.
all i can see (sequence in black and white, take off from the NaHaiWriMo facebook site)
all i can see–
black and white
in your eyes
gray–
when the sun falls
on your lies
black–
dregs settling
our arguments
white–
our window blinds
turned down
ashes
on the burner your note
in black and white
Copyright (c) by Alegria Imperial 2011
(take off from Melissa Allen’s prompt, black and white, at the still-on NaHaiWriMo facebook site)
my ‘yikes!’ haiku (from a suite of the first-ever haiku I submitted to THN)
1.
moon rise
on church window,
mom and I holding hands
2.
magnolia petals
in the wind—
the rush at my wedding
3.
shredded blooms
on my hair—
writing on my journal
4.
spring rain—
the taste of salt spray
the first time
5.
first spring walk—
a clump of drooping snowdrops
black patch smaller
6.
against the haze
a hedge of briar roses—
my unfinished poem
These and the rest in the suite of ten haiku, of course, came back declined. You might want to let me know why, first, and then, I’ll write a self-critique.
sunless spring day haiku
1.
gray spring dawn–
the shiver of daffodils
in my bones
2.
this cold–
Sakura cherry blossoms
on my window
3.
this sunless spring day
chickadees chatter on–
my indecisions
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
trove (sequence)
on street –
a shower of petals
for no one
i meet
a hissing rag rug
but dog-stunned cat
singling along
i catch a comet spray
among the daffodils
and pass by
side lying pigeon eyeing
sky path—unblinking
on my window—
potted jewelweeds,
had shed off their sun-strips
the moon shines
on maple trees—
on a city asleep
published in LYNX XXIII:3, October, 2008
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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