Saturday, November 7, 2015

Haibun


                                                        PORTRAITS              

Next to my wedding photo is one of my mother’s on her wedding day.  The pictures were taken 30 years apart.  Comparing my face as it is now and as it was then, I see the same bone structure, thick eyebrows, a small indentation in my chin.  My now face has wrinkles around the mouth.  My hair is white and my neck is crinkly.  When I compare the two me’s it is always with a surprised feeling of time, not just time flying, but never coming back.  Looking at my mother’s picture is less startling.  I don’t think of her appearance when she died.  I see her photo every day when she was young.  I imagine knowing her then.  Dark eyes and hair, smooth olive toned skin, a delicate nose and a mouth showing the tender beginnings of a smile.  A beauty in a Juliet cap and ivory velvet gown, the smooth fit showing well her slim figure.

                                                         stillness
                                                     before the midnight bong
                                                         her face in shadow


Modern Haibun and Tanka Prose, June 2009

Sunday, October 25, 2015

Haiga: Found Haiku

 


published Haigaonline
spring 2016
found haiku from
Thomas Hardy's poetry
and short stories

Saturday, October 17, 2015

Haibun


                                                    A LANDMARK

For years the empty farm house and out buildings are left to fade into their surroundings. Unpicked corn provides food for birds. The stalks gradually dry up. collapse and blow away. Hay bales soak rain, become moldy, dry out, freeze, soak up more rain and slowly disappear into the soil. It is a familiar part of the scenery, this decaying farm with the crumbling buildings until one day there is nothing but bare acres.

                                                    abandoned farm house
                                                    the quiet way it goes
                                                up in flames.

A Hundred Gourds, Dec. 2013

Sunday, October 11, 2015

Haiku



                                              death of a friend
                                              more leaves
                                              turning brown

                                              autumn leaves
                                              the puppy switches directions
                                              with the wind

                                              storm clouds part
                                              a spotlight shines
                                              on autumn

Under the Basho, 2014
Presence, May 2005
Cattails, autumn 2014

                                               

Sunday, October 4, 2015

Senryu

 
 
                                                    power outage
                                                    candlelight stories
                                                    with a sip of scotch

                                                    escape from the storm
                                                    teenage boys in the cafe
                                                    bring their own thunder

                                                    nervous new editor
                                                    sends herself
                                                    a reject

Modern Haiku
Muse Apprentice Guild
Moonset

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Haibun


                                                 GRAY
 
            Insomnia is gray. Not the pearl gray of the buttons on a new spring suit.  There is no iridescence at 2:00am.  No faint hints of pink or powder blue, no lights reflecting off a smooth polished surface.
 
            It is not the dove gray of a pair of soft, leather gloves.  There is nothing pliable or supple at 3:00 a.m. Nor is it the gray of storm clouds, charged with ions and full of power.

            The gray at 4:00 a.m. is dull and dead.
                   
                                     an instinctive pull
                                     to the glow of the street lamp-
                                     the dance of moths

            Insomnia is gravel gray.  Dark, uneven, blotchy.  A gray mass covered with a dusty film and course sandy grit.  With each move and turn, the dust lifts and floats inside my head, obscuring thoughts.  The grit irritates the soft tissues of the soul and imbeds itself in the spongy surface of the mind.

                                       hidden lives
                                      in the shadowy night-
                                      the cries of insects

            The gray swells until it has filled all the spaces that no candle or incandescent light can dispel.  Then…the first, nearly imperceptible tint of dawn gray, and the gravel gray, suddenly and completely, retreats to a corner and waits.

                                       repeated bird calls-
                                       lulled to sleep by the language
                                       of morning
           
Presence, May 2005

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Haiga

 

 
 
 
 
Published Daily Haiga
5/12/4;  7/4/12;  2/6/13

Friday, September 4, 2015

Tanka

                                          
                                              green and orange leaves
                                              the capriciousness
                                              of autumn;
                                                      how do I explain
                                                      the changes in my life?

                                              in these cool days
                                              it is her shawl I wear–
                                              a vibrant orange
                                              flashing stich after stich
                                              through her flying fingers

Magnapoets, Jan. 2009
Modern Tanka Press, July 2009
     

Haiku

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