Friday, December 5, 2014

HAIBUN



                                            NAXOS BLUE

Blue…as the sky is blue, a hot blue seen on a scorching day at noon.  Blue…as the Aegean Sea is blue, a shimmering blue under the never ending sun.  Blue on doors and shutters, on small boats in the harbor, on café signs, on domes of churches in the dusty hills.  Blue against the glare of white stucco buildings, blue against the sheen of white marble steps and sidewalks.

                                          blue and white bowl
                                              ancient history takes shape
                                                   in my hands


A HUNDRED GOURDS, Sept. 2013
JOURNEYS, An anthology of International Haibun
Edited by Angelee Deodhar, 2014

 

 

Monday, November 24, 2014

Tanka Sequence


                                                   MEMORIES II

                                                he  came poor
                                                with needles and thimble
                                                to a far land
                                                     his vision and life
                                                     pass on through me

                                               a walnut brown face
                                               from hours in the sun
                                               tending his garden
                                                    on a cold, wet morning
                                                    he is lowered into the earth
Modern English Tanka
March 2005

Saturday, November 8, 2014

Haibun

 
                                                 A CITY CORNER 
 
A hot day in June.  New York City.  Lower East Side.  People-watching from a corner café.  The tourist busses rumble down 5th Avenue, holding at the corner light.  Sun-drenched double-deckers.  The tourists squinting.  A guide, standing before one group, microphone in hand, lips moving.  “And here we have…and there…and there…”  No need for me to hear his words. 
 
This is a casual area of the City.  No high fashion, society or career women, no Brooks Brothers.  executive suits walking around.  Every-day New Yorkers, shopping the small markets and delis, the dollar stores.  Dog walkers, three and four canines marching like obedient foot-soldiers.  Mommies with strollers, delivery vans, loading, unloading.  The occasional vagrant or bag-lady shuffling through the corner trash-cans, wary and abandoned expressions on their faces.
 
                                                    shielding my eyes
                                                    from the sun glare
                                                    Walk.  Don’t Walk.
 Contemporary Haibun On-line, Sept. 2009
 

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Haiku

                                                       
                                                    tree viewing
                                                    a thinner crowd
                                                    on the steep trail

                                                    the rain over–
                                                    strong winds continue
                                                    to shake leaves dry

                                                    autumn dampness
                                                    the midnight train
                                                    late again

Daily Haiga, January 2010
Bottle Rockets, February 2009
Modern Haiku, spring 2014

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Haibun

 
CHURCH CEMETARY
 

Many gravestones sunken into the ground. Names barely legible.  Dutch and English names.  Family members buried near each other.  New York settlers seeking religious freedom, land, adventure, fortune.
 
One large headstone for three children: William, one day old; Margaret, seven months;  Jonathan, three months, each one born a little more than a year after the death of the previous child.

Did the parents try again and their fourth child live? Surely, this couple had a dream, a plan, along with courage and fear,  when they came to this raw, new land.  Did they ever find what they were seeking?  There are no other markers with the same family name.

                                           chilling wind –
                                           children on the playground chase
                                           a run-away kite

 Presence #38, Spring,2008

Monday, October 20, 2014

TANKA

                                              she sings of autumn
                                              and of love dying–
                                              I know not of this
                                              yet, for all my happy days
                                              there comes a melancholy

Modern English Tanka
July 2009

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

HAIKU


                                           cooler today   I form a plan
                                           greater than    my energy

                                          tea in china cups
                                          the wet afternoon perfumed
                                          with tangerine peels

                                          mid-afternoon
                                          a waning sun comes through
                                          the autumn damp

Cattails, Jan. 2014
Shiku Kukai, May 2011
Hokku Web page, Dec. 2003

Haiku

  weekend getaway coffee on the veranda with a gecko Sense  & Sensibility