Tag: dVerse Haibun Monday

Broadway

Those boxed rectangles with bland colors offer some differentiation but that’s not enough.  The white is what’s important not what steps on it to stand out.

Unless those squares let white show through, there’s nothing they can do except to blandly block the view.

But then I heard and understood.  It’s not those ghostly squares.  They’re the victims.  It’s that deathly white itself, the very stuff I thought was pure. I almost didn’t see it.  Now I do, burying, as if it could, the light that would shine through.

     
            Empty restaurants
     Birds will nest in time for spring
          Water flows and falls

Linked to dVerse Haibun Monday. Kim Russell is hosting with the theme of Piet Mondrian’s ‘Broadway Boogie Woogie’.

New York City from the Empire State Building

Indigenous Behavior

The 40 degree weather didn’t stop locals and non-locals, all of us indigenous to this planet, from running, or cheering on the runners, in the Chicago Marathon. 

Admittedly there is something odd about 45 thousand members of an indigenous species voluntarily running 26.2 miles and even keeping track – to the second – of records such as the 2:14.04 top time set by Kenyan’s Brigid Kosgei for women runners.  I can imagine aliens from another planet, ready to invade, having second thoughts because of that, but if these marathons help keep out those non-indigenous species I’m all in favor of them.

The photo I took was from the very last mile at the very end of the race going up Michigan Avenue. The top winners had finished hours ago. If I were a runner and I got that far, which is questionable, that’s where I’d be. About midway under the Chinatown arch what made me smile was a sign that read, “Hurry up and finish, your mom’s freezing out here”.

Run past Chinatown
in windy Chicago weather
back home to Grant Park

Linked to Trent P. McDonald’s The Weekly Smile. Also linked to dVerse Haibun Monday where Frank J. Tassone hosts with the theme to “celebrate all things indigenous”.

Trent P. McDonald’s The Weekly Smile

January, Upside Down

This January I hoped to see a tiny crescent Moon in the morning just before sunrise. I think such a Moon is upside down, but maybe it is right-side up as well. Regardless, the mornings this January when the opportunity arose were cloudy. The expected sliver of Moon did not appear.

While waiting to see if the clouds would clear I recalled an old couple. Toward the end of their lives they behaved like teenagers in love. They held each other close even in public. They smiled warmly at each other. They seemed upside down to some of us although we all wished we would have their right-side up love when we were their ages.

For many of us clouds get in the way modestly blocking reality. I’ve learned this January that all that is perhaps the way it is supposed to be. Clouds in morning sunlight also put on beautiful shows. Besides, it is easy to forgive all that cloudiness when I realize they also wanted a happy ending.

 
THERE'S VENUS, CLOUDS, AND
JUPITER. IT’S WINTER, BUT
OCEAN WAVES ARE WARM.

Linked to K’lee and Dale’s Cosmic Photo Challenge with the theme “upside-down” and to dVerse Haibun Monday where Kim is hosting with the theme of January. And to Debbie Roth’s Forgiving Fridays.

Right-side Up or Upside Down, It's Morning
Right side Up or Upside Down, It’s Morning

Waiting From a New Perspective

I’ve been to Gillson Park many times. It is on Lake Michigan and there is plenty of parking. It is a little far for me to bicycle, but it would not be impossible. What’s impossible is not what’s important. What’s important is that there is a park here at all and there is a beautiful lake that waits on it like a servant.

There's a haiku here
somewhere waiting for me
to try to find it.

Linked to K’lee and Dale’s Cosmic Photo Challenge with the theme “from an unusual angle”. Also linked to dVerse Haibun Monday where Imelda is hosting.

Lake Michigan in Late November

One

On a morning walk I am like a bee in search of nectar knowing this richness hides behind color, knowing it could be anywhere and then seeing it, there, right there, in one flower with yellow petals and drops of dew. I put the phone close to it and take a picture trying to see the drops of dew on the leaves but who knows what the photo will show? It isn’t me looking anymore.

Or there it is, in that one tree, in the distance blessed with morning sunbeams, surrounded by the branches and trunk of a nearby tree and below by a soccer field, standing out as one among many trees right now. Even the mistiness of this morning singles this one tree out hiding all those in the background. Just one tree, right now, over there, and why do my eyes find it so beautiful?

YELLOW BLOOMS ATTRACT
LIKE GREEN THIS MISTY MORNING
SUMMER SAYS GOODBYE

 

Linked to dVerse Haibun Monday where qbit/Randall is hosting with the theme of one’s self en masse.

Photos: “Soccer Field in the Morning”, above, and “Each One”, below.

Each One

Morning

I wake to thunder and shivers of lightning through the window. The rhythmic sound of rain comes and goes. The sky surrenders with its tears.

Will I find the right words today? I only need to risk a few. Some come to me like soothing rain perhaps through the storm clouds of my dreams. I wonder, will they do?

Today, depending on how long the sky needs, the Sun may stay behind the clouds holding the sky in warm embrace forgiving the sky for all those doubts.

morning thunderstorm
rain weeps summer’s sun away
autumn starts to fall

Text: Linked to dVerse Haibun Monday. Mish is hosting with the theme of “morning”.  I am also linking this to Debbie Roth’s Forgiving Fridays.

Tomorrow I will be hosting dVerse Poetics with the theme of frustration and heartbreak featuring Gerard Manley Hopkin’s poem “Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend” and Dionne Warwick singing the Bee Gee’s “Heartbreaker“.

Photos: “Early Morning”, above, “Morning Shadows and Reflections”, below.

News: My poem “Boundaries” appeared in the current issue of The Lyric.

Morning Shadows and Reflections

Attic

The chapel at the college Thomas and I attended had a storage room in its attic. Thomas and I went there one afternoon. We weren’t supposed to, but that made it all the more intriguing. There was enough light coming through a dirty window to see desks, equipment and oddly beds piled haphazardly around the walls. This dusty place made Thomas think of a tale of demon possession. He told stories well with facial expressions that kept my attention. The last sentence of his story, spoken while he looked suspiciously at me, was, “The devil could possess anyone.”

I say that was the last sentence, because at that point in the story, assuming there was more, a beetle, big and ugly, started bouncing up and down on the ceiling high above us. We thought the bug had gone bonkers. Besides, the bouncing was loud enough to stop Thomas from continuing his story with further hints of my being possessed by something or other. We looked up at the bug. Thomas looked at me. He had an idea. While the bug bounced up and down, up and down, Thomas cautiously crossed his two index fingers and raised his arms to target the noisy bug through them. The moment his eyes, the finger cross and that bug lined up so he could get a good shot—right at that moment—the bug soundlessly dropped to the floor.

RUNNING FROM THAT ROOM’S
SPOOKY SPRINGTIME BOUNCING BUG
BEETLE’S TURN TO SMILE

Text: Linked to dVerse Haibun Monday.  Lillian is hosting.  Haibun should have two paragraphs of prose about something that really happened. I can’t forget that bug. There should be a “kigo” on the second line of the haiku representing the season. Mine is “springtime”. The haiku should break in two parts at a “kiregi”. I think mine breaks between springtime and bouncing when attention shifts from us rushing out of that room to the smiling bug.  By way of disclosure, neither of us went back to see if the bug was actually smiling. That’s just what I would do were I that bug and I assume only the prose part has to be factual.

Photos: “Upstairs Toward the Blue”, above, and “Climbing”, below.

Climbing

Long Ago

My first job was in data processing. The night shift gave me the day to enjoy the city. I mounted magnetic tape onto drives as tall I was. It was a job that begged to be automated. That was long ago. Like Sisyphus, I can still see myself mounting those tapes only to take them down again.

My walk to work led past the Art Institute. I spent an hour each afternoon wandering through the exhibits. I can still see some of them.

One of the benefits of membership, at least in those days, long ago, in what I would even call the mysterious dark ages of my life, was the free coffee that the Institute offered in the afternoon. I became a regular around four in the afternoon with a dozen retirees who were always there and a few strangers who might wander in some afternoon and whom we would never see again. I can still taste that coffee.

Through daydreams blow the breeze of memory.
When shadows break I look and sometimes see.

Text: Linked to dVerse Haibun Monday.  Jilly is hosted with the challenge to the traditional form.

Photos: “Blue and Green”, above, and “Red and Green”, below.

Red and Green

Silent Sound

While walking through a garden what I see, and what I miss, is filtered through words sounding through my mind. I don’t talk out-loud to myself.  I make sure these words stays quiet: silent words, silent sounds.  I don’t mind my mind doing this. I enjoy the company unless it’s noisy, offering a wintry mood to a spring day.

There are times when I look about and my mind goes silent on its own. I assume, like me, that it is also stunned, as if to say, but not saying anything, staying really silent this time, “Isn’t that beautiful!”

LEAVES WAKE UP ON OAKS
SPRING LOOKS OUT AT EVERYONE
SILENT SMILING SOUND

Text: Linked to dVerse Haibun Monday. I am hosting this week with the theme “silent sound”, whatever that means to you.

Photos: “Ivy”, above, and “Oak Beauty”, below.

Oak Beauty

 

Compassion

Compassion proves we can get outside ourselves, boxed in as we are conceptually as individuals, deluded in our isolation, but those who have it don’t need proof much as they don’t need proof of anything that shows our humanity. They know all of this and more is real.

RAIN CLOUDS OR SUN SHINE
THE BIRDS STAY CLOSE TOGETHER
TWO KNOW TRUTH AS ONE

Text: Linked to dVerse Haibun Monday. Xenia Tran is hosting with the theme of compassion.

Photos: “New Leaves Sharing a Tree”, above, and “Sharing the Park”, below.

Sharing the Park

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