Journey through my Mind: Haibun

A thought, and my brain takes off on a journey. Turns me around, mind-wandering through worlds we cannot see, time, and space, a trace of Chaos theory, the hard problem, history and mythology. I seek connections, new directions.  I wonder about ghosts, hosts, and cat dreams. Streams of thought, or so it seems. In the end, I hope (familiar trope), looking for the good, the light. I wake up happy to see the sleep-bound moon and the growing dawn. Nothing is foregone. My heart sings and wings with the birds.

 

birdsong as night falls

cardinals’ red echoes leaves

summer sighs farewell

 

This Haibun is for Haibun Monday at dVerse. We’re asked to write “a haibun about why you write the style of poetry you write. Not why you write poetry, but the why of your style.” This is to be followed by a classic Haiku, which must include a season word. We were also asked (an option) to post a photo.

 

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Liminal Skies: Haibun

The days grow shorter, and I wake in the dark. The mockingbird no longer sings through the night on a branch outside my window. It made me happy to hear him, comforting somehow, familiar like the tree itself. Has he gone, or merely changed his timing and repertoire as early summer moves inescapably towards fall? Yet through open windows, I hear other acquaintances, robins and cardinals, still warbling and chirping. A few leaves have changed from green to gold. The bright blue skies of September soon will yield to violet, then grey. The air is fresh, the days warm and the nights cool. The vibrant corn moon blazes in the morning sky. She hums a song, autumn is coming.

 

liminal skies sigh

chasing shadows round the sun

leaves whisper and fall

This is for dVerse Haibun Monday. Yeah, I’m a bit late.

Toni asked us to write about the in-between seasons. She wrote, “I was thinking intensely of the Japanese word, komorebi (koe moe ray bee) which means specifically light that is filtered between leaves and usually occurring in spring and fall…but in that in-between-season.”

It occurs to me, too, that many people right now (my family and friends among them) are in an in-between state waiting for Hurricane Irma to arrive. My thoughts are with you. This seems to be a time of catastrophe and upheaval everywhere.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stones Turned: Haibun

I’m in bed thinking about the day, turning over thoughts and deeds, like stones, to see what lies beneath. Perhaps I’m looking for deeper meanings. I dream of a dead woman I never met, the ex-wife of someone I do know. She is funny, wise, and kind–vital and alive in my mind. She invites us to dinner. “Let’s dress up,” she says, “I think I’ll wear red velvet.” Perhaps she has the answers. But what is the question?

 

thoughts rolling in waves,

an ever-changing shoreline

doors to other worlds–

pipe dreams floating on seafoam,

or ships navigating home?

This Haibun is for Colleen Chesebro’s Weekly Poetry Challenge. The prompt words were stone and turn. I really did have this dream last night.

 

Storm Music

I’m awakened by the rain hitting the window, the barker for the upcoming show. Step right up, folks! This one’s a dazzler of light and sound. The lightning takes center stage as it illuminates the sky, followed by the chorus of thundering kettle drums. One cat leaps off the bed; the other snuggles closer to my side. My husband sleeps, but I’m held captive, an unwitting, unwilling audience for this production. Do hours pass, or does it just seem that way? The endless percussion, the strobing encores? The fortissimo storm music finally ends, drifting off, pianissimo, until it’s gone. I dream then of shadows and golden light, of distant seas and far off worlds, until at last, the sun rises, waking me again, with a gentle song.

whirling midnight storms

shadows flit through worlds and minds

in dawn’s light, vanish

 

 

 

Embed from Getty Images

 

This Haibun is for Colleen Chesebro’s Weekly Poetry Challenge.

The prompt words were shadow and light.

I’m also linking to dVerse, where Gayle is hosting an open link night.

 

 

August: Songs in my Heart

You would have been ninety-eight today. I mark the date as the day awakens—crickets chirping, and birds beginning their morning chorus, a little later now in August than June. I imagine you as you were before you got sick—larger than life, or so it seemed. Until you shrank, encased inside a body that had become frail, and then your life shrank, too. In your last apartment, filled with bric-a-brac (a word that always sounded like a magical game to me), the Chinese vases and statues, the antiques that shared space with other collections–books and papers, drawings and old art projects we had made—later, after you were gone, and the space echoed with silence, we found the old school lunch boxes and report cards in your closet.

 

Your grandchildren, my daughters, played on your balcony. I remember red geraniums there, but perhaps I’ve added them in my mind, as I’ve added them to my kitchen window box. I think about my daughters playing and singing, wonder if their love of music came from you. I wish you could have seen the women they’ve become. You would be so proud of them. (I hate that you are gone.) I suspect you, and not my mom, bought the Broadway soundtrack recordings that my sister and I listened to so often when we were little, making up plays in our Dallas bedroom. I remember you singing. Did you have a soundtrack running in your head, as I do?

When I was a teen, you drove me crazy singing “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” over and over again. I hated that song (I hate that you are gone); I’d love to hear you sing it again. With age, I’ve realized the universe is filled with music, though we don’t always hear it. Some songs drift through your brain, others you hear in your heart.

 

Heart-songs float through time

stars, the proud troubadours, sing,

tones linger like dreams

 

 

My dad’s birthday was yesterday, August 9. This Haibun is for Colleen’s Weekly Poetry Challenge. The prompt words were hate and pride. I had another idea that used the words much more definitively, but this happened instead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Muse: Haibun

I am dreaming. I stand on a beach in a wild and beautiful land. There is a woman there with burnished skin, like cherry wood, polished and glowing. She’s clothed in a gown of flowers–red, yellow, and white buds that seem to open and bloom before my eyes. As she walks, the air around her parts in song. I hear it, carried on a breeze scented by the sea and tropical blossoms. The sun shines above me, but casts no shadows. I think time has stopped, or perhaps it has no meaning in this place. The woman approaches a doorway at the edge of sand and jungle. Smiling, she turns and gestures for me to follow. I calmly take a step—then wake–but I remember.

infinite doorway

from dream-time the muse beckons

in vision of light

indigo night turns rosy

dawn trailing whispered secrets

 

D. Howard Hitchcock, “Waikiki Beach in Sunlight,” [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

This is for Colleen Chesebro’s Poetry Challenge. The prompt words are calm and wild.

I wrote a poem in my dreams about a week ago. When I woke, I couldn’t remember it. All I remembered was one of my daughters writing about the poem, “OMG, OMG—that poem!” (My subconscious gives me pep talks.) And I had an image of a woman, Caribbean perhaps, dressed in a brightly flowered dress.

I am still crazy-busy writing a final entry for another one that didn’t come through from a contributor. I apologize for being so behind in reading so many wonderful posts and missing challenges and prompts. I’m trying to catch up as I can.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Safe Harbor: Haibun

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

–from Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”

 

Our ship is stalled in the harbor–the weather, customs duties, bribes to officials—who knows why? We live in suspended time in a liminal space—on a ship, but not at sea; people who have left their homes, but who have not found a new one, refugees. I worry about leaving—perhaps it would not be so bad to stay? But it is too late, we are sailing. Weeks seem like months, as my stomach rolls and heaves with the ship, till at last we arrive. We are weary, but grateful for our new home, a small room in the house of distant kin. At night, we walk to the beach to escape the heat of the day. My sister’s face mirrors my own—relief that the journey is over, sadness that we may never see our parents again, and joy that we are safe. We dance on the sand under a moonlit sky.

 

Faults in men, not stars

lighting a sea-crossed journey

freedom has a price–

beckoning with torch raised high,

the beacon separates, too

 

 

This is for Colleen Chesebro’s Weekly Poetry Challenge.  The prompt words were mirror and harbor. I remember my grandfather telling me about when he was a boy, after he, his mother, and his sister left Kiev, their ship was stuck in Trieste. I don’t know why or how they got there. Trieste was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I mentioned him in a previous post called Feast of the Immigrant. 

And here’s the Hamilton mix tape based on the line from the show, “Immigrants, we get the job done.”

 

 

Summer Storm: Haibun

From a dream world I’m summoned back, awakened by a boom and a crash. A flash of light illuminates the room through the window shades. My cat rises, ears up, but he remains by my side. Seeking comfort or giving it? Lovely petrichor drifts in through the windows left open from the summer day. Then boom, crash, flash, and the rain comes down in a rushing torrent, like a waterfall from the sky. I listen to it, feeling like the world below me might flood, and my bed become a ship that sails me, not into dreams, but into a murky river. I lie there in the dark, counting “one Mississippi, two Mississippi” each time the thunder roars. Finally, it is over, and I sleep, dreaming of oceans and sandy beaches. I wake to the mockingbird’s song, and a day that is washed clean. Hope sparkles in the morning sun.

 

Spirits rage at night

crash and bang till washed away

in wonder, joy reigns

 

Nikolay Nikanorovich Dubovskoy [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

This is late entry for for dVerse. 

I guess it’s a summer memory now, since it happened a couple of days ago. 🙂

 

The Violin: Haibun

I awaken in a clean bed, my curls still soap-and-water-damp, but no longer tangled with tears and sweat. Kind people have taken me in–giving me a home and a violin to replace the one Papa gave me years ago. The one the soldiers smashed. It is old, this violin, and as I cradle it under my chin, I wonder what secrets it carries beneath its varnished surface, what tunes lie buried within the fine wood. I look out the window to see the stars, fairy lights that twinkle and beckon in the dark. I quietly hum an old folk tune, the motif of the piece I’m writing, blending old and new–a continuous and repeated theme, as in life, a melody of sorrow and hope. And now, from my window, I see the dawn– pink, orange, and red wings feather-brushed across the sky above the golden sun. The day is bright with magic and possibility. I am ready to greet it.

 

The strings laugh and cry,

sing music of many souls

through light and dark clouds

life twinkles brightly, then blinks

to fly through space, dance through time

 

Lorenzo Lippi, “Allegorie der Musik” [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

This haibun is for Colleen Chesebro’s weekly poetry challenge. The prompt words were fairy and magic. She is celebrated fairies and the summer solstice this weekend. Go visit her!

 

Star Spirit: Haibun

 

I am born with the stars, but I have always been. From a shadow world and through a smoky veil, I emerge, a shimmering spirit. A bang, a flash, and the universe expands, pitch-black, but filigreed with radiance. I skim the waves of space and time and dance to the humming music of the cosmos. Wherever I go, I leave a glow, light in the darkness. I travel in loops and streams, in and out of umbras, always and forever. See me, that flicker in the night sky–there and gone.

 

star spirit shimmers

darting, dancing joyfully

gilding the darkness

circling round suns, moons, and stars,

constant, timeless, eternal

 

Attributed to Carl Schweninger der Jüngere, “Morgenstern,” [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

This haibun is for Colleen Chesebro’s weekly poetry challenge.  The prompt words were smoke and veil.