questions, your answer…a haiku series
winter silhouettes—
if blackened do nails
retell stories?
***
spiced wind
do snow tracks carry
your voice?
***
when banana hearts
peel off a lover, is it
the solstice?
***
lotus shadow…
is that frog song
a dirge?
***
tattered waves
why must keening tears
leap as an arc?
***
roaring wind
from what stone pod
do you rise?
***
sun dial
in the dark toasting
minions?
***
his arrhythmic heart
on a treadle… does the weaver
know?
***
wild wind
on dry sedge—
what more in her mind?
***
spiraling down
as fish…is the ocean
my soul?
random seasons, a haiku/senryu series
stone wall
mottled hands escaping
through air
ham flavor
hangs about her sweater
hospice weekend
though touch-less
the intimate rustle of silk
fall
dog buries
bruises
hobbling out of my midnight winter moon
apple core
how to bottle
memories
a tiger
musing on my eye
autumn dusk
chopped beets
i wash the knife
of traces
open page
an opaque scent
in his bath water
oak stump–
i remember the hornets
last summer
shell shards
on a paint roller
a womb
Robert Frost’s stone house in Shaftsbury, Vermont
He had bought this house to try his hand at farming but quite unsuccessfully, yet he kept it, visiting it intermittently while he taught in and around the state. The house is now a modest museum with sparse furniture but paneled with text, chronicling his life and poetry. It’s here in a room facing south of what is now a field of wild flowers that he wrote his most anthologized and quoted poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” one June morning following the winter he went horse riding. The room is dedicated to the poem, including how he wrote it—as a whole in one sweep—controversies regarding a comma, discussions and debates on what he meant by his most quoted stanza, as well as critics’ attempts at drawing out from him more than what he wrote. They agree on the ‘ulteriority’ of his poetry as he insisted there is no hidden meaning in his lines. He simply meant ‘it was getting late and I had to go home.’ But debates rage on…
“…The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”
As a lover of his poetry, having been introduced to ‘his woods’ in my youth in a faraway tropical country, visiting his house has meant, for me, finding fulfillment of a yet another vague dream.
Alegria Imperialtxt/Eleanor Angelespix
the only star (haibun for Locating the Senses in Language and Place)
As if it is unusual, the way evening falls on our lives in the winter. The cold bars us in, our thoughts seemingly unto each own. Winter, I once said, drawing a long sigh, asks of us the wearying task of digging into our burrows alone and not together, like squirrels and hares and bears. As if I hardly change. As if the seasons pass me by and like a portrait on stone—my pose in reverie engraved the way I must look right now. No sound except Kat-kat sleeping, purring dreams.
I murmur. I know. Soon, the cold winds will curl up and roll into the hearts of seas. Heat will seep off iced waters and the dark earth. I know a clump of snowdrops by the gate will spawn again, shy as virgins who would never look up to their lovers’ eyes. In a while, crocuses will sprout buds like pursed lips, waiting for a kiss. Not filigreed lawns but mantled front gardens of Queen Anne’s lace will soon spark.
This morning, I glimpsed pregnant knuckles of hydrangea twigs, though the cherry trees remain dead in the cold sun. I know their blossoms, as well the white plums and magnolias, will huddle over skies in a night. But for now, deep in the quietness of snow
this longing
at moonrise
the only star
by Alegria Imperial posted for
Locating the Senses in Language and Place Edition #14, Stella Pierides, editor
doves/winter dawn/eyes (haiku on relationships at NaHaiWriMo)
Inca doves nesting courtesy of wikicommons
1.
cooing
we slip past
the brambles
3.
winter dawn
grayer than her tresses
on his chest
3.
eyes
locked in adoration
my cat and i
Nov 25th prompt by Carlos Colon at the still ongoing National Haiku Writing Month (NaHaWriMo facebook site) with slight editing of #1.
reggae (haibun)
So, why reggae when I could or must dwell on variations of winter? Even the sun has withdrawn to cuddle up with hibernating thoughts and fur-thickened limbs. It’s cold and damp and gray in my city everyday. Which is why perhaps, this morning I woke up with the sound of reggae on a basin in my mind, the kind you hear on Times Square in New York from the subway station on 42nd and Broadway to the corners of that triangle where Tickits booths stand.
reggae–
the sun dripping
on his basin
Always, a robust sun streams no end on the basin from which reggae artists coax notes to rise like it were a constant season. But we don’t return after the summer or late spring.
catching a breath
his notes leave for the moon–
reggae
Or under a November sky, without the sun and the reggae artist, we would ourselves be lamenting.
reggae the sun we can’t find
purring/the only sound…(a haiku that went on to be a vignette, not a haibun)
purring–
the only sound
between them
…as if it is unusual, marks the way evening falls ever so quietly in our lives in the winter. The cold bars us in, our thoughts seemingly unto each own. Winter, I once said, drawing a deep long sigh, asks of us a wearying task of digging into our burrows alone and not together. He had quipped, like squirrels and hares and bears, right?
He makes light of the dark, that’s him, my friend and lover. I see beyond everything and make too much of it, as he describes my thought patterns. As if I hardly change, as if the seasons pass me by and like a portrait on stone–my pose in reverie engraved the way I must look right now, looking out to the soft snow glowing on its own light as it falls. No sound except Kat-kat sleeping, purring its dreams.
Don’t worry, he breaks the silence. In a few weeks, the bare trees will sprout, he says without looking at me from the book he’s reading. I know, I murmur. I know. The cold winds will curl up and roll into the depths of seas. Heat will seep off the waters and the dark frozen earth, breathing life back to whatever withered and died in the cleansing whiteness of snow. I’m not worried or sad, if that’s what you think, I retort delayed. I’m simply pondering…
…and I continue. A clump of snowdrops by the gate will spawn again shy as virgin girls who would never look up to their lovers’ eyes. In a while, crocuses will raise their buds like pursed lips, waiting for a kiss. Not filigreed lawns but front gardens dotted with Queen Anne’s lace will soon unfurl. This morning, I glimpsed pregnant knuckles of hydrangea twigs, though the cherry trees in the winter sun remain starkly bare, and flapping among winter debris, the nuthatch, an early migrant bird. Spring, a brief and giddying season, I know, always seems to burst and spangle the skies with cherry blossoms, white plums and magnolias as if overnight…but I must end here and take the rest of the seasons in a new cycle of our lives.
Kat-kat wakes up, looks out the window and tightens up to a hunter’s pose. I follow her eyes to a stirring in the trees. Not a leaf but a nuthatch. Spring, I cry out! I told you so, he says without looking.
Possibly a haibun? No it can’t be because one of the many features of a haibun according to “Poetry Form-The haibun” from J. Zimmerman’s book, parts of which can be read on the web, is that “The haiku is not a linear continuation of the prose” or in this case, I suppose not an introduction to the prose.
In this post, the vignette just took over from the haiku. I see it though as a string of several possible haiku!
mist/deepwinter/thunder in the copse–v-day haiku but no ‘heart’ as kigo (for One Stop Poetry, also my 13th,14th,15th NaHaiWriMo)
13.
mist—
too wet on cheeks
to be a kiss
14.
deep winter—
bundled up we search
for each other’s eyes
15.
thunder in the copse
a vow
unintended
‘Heart’ as kigo is missing here but it’s hinted at. Does Valentine belong to Japanese haiku tradition? I believe it’s not though I don’t really know much about modern Japanese haiku. Perhaps, it has included it as a kigo. Here’s what I think comes closest to it–the courtly tanka in its purest form like this tanka from Thomas Gurgal’s Japanese Tanka, The Court Poetry of a Golden Age, first posted here under grey relentless rain (is it tanka? 02/07 2011) ‘I am comforted’ page 41:
I am comforted;
Now wordly impermanence
Seems unimportant;
Seen in the depths of your eyes,
The warm eternal darkness.
Posted also for One Stop Poetry’s Saturday Celebration of Valentine’s Day. Check us out!
gouache image
gouache image
of itself in the sky–
winter moon
winter magnolia
blotched
knobbed
bare–
winter magnolia
Image:Atlanta_trees_039_764.JPG
http://www.wkikihow.com<a
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?
Recent Comments
alee9 on … madhuri on … alee9 on My latest at Bones journa… alee9 on My haiku awards alee9 on a beggar’s prayer
jornales 