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Posts Tagged ‘Haiku-ish’

ADVENT

1
A bitter edge.
Two ravens
Smudge motionless air.
A blessing it is
To have breath.

2
The slant of rain
Roars on rooftops again.
The fire, though, burns bright.
A blessing it is
To have breath.

3
A slow dawn.
The hills have yet to return
From their night journeys.

4
Oak’s iron hand.
Black veins
Holding what remains
Of sunlight.

5
A thousand galaxies
In the old man’s beard.
Sudden brightness
On a winter’s path.

6
A knot of dream,
Tangled,
Sinks down into darkness
Still wriggling.

7
Mercury and lead
Are the roads leading to emptiness.
Puddle-edged, empty,
They rise and fall
As if someone
Were watching.

8
Time slows,
Withers and stops.
Solstice.
Only the rain.

A blessing it is
To have breath.

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Twilight now
no certain edge
no end nor beginning of it,
an inperceptible slide.

Colours smudge,
blood turns black
(its bitter colour)
lost in peeled shadow.

All ruins stir-
a swung memory,
tacit rhythm,
mumbled sight pitter-patters.

A moth wing trepidation
vibrating mica dust,
dew singed,
a collapse in certainty.

A heavenly moment
of relapse.
cascading inconsequence.
silent dice tumbled,
bounce and settle.

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STANDSTILL

Frown-dark hill

Red kite’s raw call

Still valley wood

Snaked silver streams

Low sun shudders.

Thin flask shivered:

One day moon

Necklace silver

Cool stream sliced

Bedded deep

Winter night.

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In the mist at daybeak:
Ghost of whitened
mountain
Climbs thunderclouds.

Under eaves,
through slow rain spatter,
Small bats chase,
wings squeeking.

Still is the air.
We tumble
and totter
through space.

We are now such
A tower of cloud
And rain.

A roar,
A drumroll,
A whisper,
Percussed silence.

Leaving glistening
Green skin:
This world.

As she sleeps
I find her slopes
And gullies.
I love the
Familiar folds.
A rising mountain
I become
And she,
The deep greens
And valley dark.
No distinction:
One rising breath,
One landscape.
We, a loved land
Clouded and clear.

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Fragments from a Long Road

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In the blue shadows:
White bindweed moons.
Indescribable fragrance,
This August, summer air.

How the hills
Swell with rain,
Rise pale and loiter
At the edge of sight.

Chicory, wide-eyed
by the roadside,
Ragged blue
as the windy sky.

Even through these warm still days,
The scot’s pines, ever singing
Of storms and roaring seas.

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CONVERSATIONS 15

REWRITE
Convincing ghosts rewrite our certain pasts,
or bitter to the last, at least try to inject their dying voices,
inject their reasons, their stories.
We all, full of hunger, scurry for validation,
deny our small wickednesses, rewrite, remember.

SHADED
In that
Green shade
We are made
And unmade.
Click of insect moments.


COUPLET
The demons of eloquence
are not always right,
but their arguments
should always ruffle and delight!


HARMONIC
What each we are,
A note plucked once and dying.
Attack, sustain, release, delay.
That harmonic wave is what we are,
How we intrude,
How we linger.


SMALL
Over that hill it is always dawn, always midnight.
The smell of dew on hay,
The rising insects floating silent.
All this is uniquely ours –
This dawn, this sunset,
A moment fashioned and nested.
An egg of memory, in this small circle.


SUNLIT
The pillars of the sky:
Skylark’s song.
Morning stillness.


NOT QUITE
In you…
Nothing moves
That is not world’s spin,
Past’s voice.
A wind’s will,
A wisp,
Not quite a nothing
Not quite a quite…


EDGE
One star remaining
White edge of the summer night
Rimmed, restless, drawn out.


BINARY
Alert
Or asleep, on
or off,
The eye
Of the I,
Blink, unblink,
Blink.

—-
VALEDICTION
The vale of now.
We move in and out of it
Hardly touching,
So caught up we are:
The sounds of our own echoing,
Fading footprints.
Mouthing alphabets
And times-tables.
Numerate, literate,
Dust dressed in story,
Veiled whisp, regardless.

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4
(Nones)

Swallows dancing
At the eaves:
An architecture
Of song.

Round worlds:
Nests take
The form of heaven
The form of earth.
Lined soft,
Down heartbeat,
Safe and sound.

6
(Compline)

A perfect moon
In a perfect sky:
Perfect hymn,
Perfect prayer.

All night
In dew-wet fields
Lambs call to their mothers,
Mothers to their lambs.

On shrouded paths:
Solomon’s seal,
Lily of the valley.
Simple grace.


The original Hours of Prayer were seven, but over time some combined together, like Matins and Lauds at sunrise, and some seem to have been dropped, or abbreviated, like the Vigils throughout the night. We are poorer for some freedoms. The rhythms and tides of quiet attention lock us into a humbler being within the world.

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HAIKU : ALAP AND JOR ALAP

Raag Bhairavi
Alap of blackbirds
Rain cooling breeze.

Liquid air
Alap of blackbirds
Wind tampura.

Cloud blooms blackbird’s song
New green sways dances
Welcome rains welcome breezes
Mind tongue tastes cool day
Touch settled on clear moments.

(Classical Indian music is arranged in developmental sections. First, is a slow alap where the notes of the scale (raga, raag) are explored in relation to the pakad or thematic melody of the piece. Next comes a jor alap, which is slightly more structured with a rhythmic percussive accompaniment on the chikari strings ( akin to strumming on the guitar combined with a lead melody picked out).
Raag Bhairavi is one of my favorites. I believe it is a morning raag, but has a rather haunting and melancholy pakad with a lovely descent of notes.)

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GOOD FRIDAY

1
Dew beads the grasstops,
Drawn upwards by the moon.
Still air,
birdsong, too, rising.
My heart,
weightless
Lifts,
Hollow ghost.

2
Beading grasstops
Dew drawn upward –
The brightest moon

The brightest moon
Birdsong rising –
Cloudless sky

Cloudless sky –
My heart, weightless,
Turns like a ghost.

Turns like a ghost,
Moon in the west,
Seeks shelter
In the deep hills

In the deep hills
Night remains.
Rising birdsong

Rising birdsong
A world dividing.
Edges of the sky

Edges of the sky
Weightless heart
Moonlit dawn

Moonlit dawn
Rising and falling
The way of heaven

Way of heaven
Floating heart
Weightless souls

Weightless souls
Rise on birdsong.
The dew has fallen.

3
Taking wing
They rise and melt –
Departing moments.

Departing moments.
My weightless soul
Rolls over
In cool, moonlit dawn

In cool, moonlit dawn
Dreams depart.
The way of heaven.

The way of heaven:
One window, the moon.
One window, the sun,
Heart between,
Remaining.

4
The dead rise weightless.
Some to the sun,
Some to the moon,
Some to the hollow skies.

They rise on floating song,
The birds of dawn.

Turning slowly,
Moment by moment
Forgetting their names,
Into the eternal expanses
Of a patient heaven.

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EASTERTIDE

Morning sun.
Lambs and ewes.

In the shadows
Where frost dissolves:
Cool moved airs,
A glistening reflection.

A movement,
A stillness:

The space where thought
Had been.

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