Category: Haiku

Mother Earth’s quilt (haiga)

Our host has posted music to inspire us. I don’t know about you but fairies, leprechauns and angels keep fluttering in my mind’s eye.  Perhaps it is the Irish in me for I do love Celtic music and this piece brings me close to my Irish roots on Ballybunion. I am not much of a fairy tale writer as you may have noticed in my other blog I wrote for the Lavender Lady at MLMM prompt. My children told me while they were growing up all the bedtime stories, I invented when tucking them in, were not subtle enough…all had a morale to the tale and they quickly figured it out.  . Well, what do you want with a mom who is a counsellor and family life educator?  But I do remember one tale of the rabbit with those long droopy ears and that extra tall giraffe who were bullied but I digress.

 This music brought me to a whimsical place but not quite lost.  My desk faces a patio window and I see the trees shedding more each day especially with the cold rain in the past three days.  So listening to this beautiful piece of music I can’t help but see fairies working tirelessly adorning warm coverlets before the white duvet that is far from warm, but cold…very cold will cover our earch.

Here is the music our host has posted to inspire us:

Adrian von Ziegler – Sacred Earth

And here is his beautiful haiku:

Mother Earth blossoms
while I dream of unknown paths –
the scent of roses

© Chèvrefeuille

My humble offering I wrote this morning but never had a chance to post because I forgot it on my laptop at home 😦

Autumn Fairies – Mental Mishap Deviant Art

cross-stitch fondly
gold and amber threads,
Mother Earth’s quilt

~

fairies darn briskly
trimming season’s quilt,
frost’s preamble

© Tournesol ’14

Sacred Earth – Carpe Diem

rainforest concerto (tanka)

 

The Time Glass  prompt today at Carpe Diem  Valley Stream, is to use the haiku composed by your host AND the photo of a waterfall.  It was tempting to complete this into a tan renga but he did mention a “solo” renga or a tanka.  I could not help but notice the waterfall was a photo in Maui, Hawaii. When I saw the last line of our host, “the silence” I thought of birds singing being masked by the sounds of gurgling streams OR the roar of the waterfalls.

I wanted to include birds from Hawaii and liked the sounds of the honeycreepers such as ‘l’iwi , hearing several examples on Youtube. I wanted to add the name of a tree that these birds inhabit and fell upon the Ohia lehua tree.  Well, that brought me to a legend and Carpe Diem is keen on legends and stories.

Legend explains the birth of the Ohia tree and its flower, the Lehua blossom. The legend is tied to the volcano goddess, Pele. This story explains that if you pluck this flower, it will rain on the same day (for a tragic reason).

The legend of the Ohia tree and the Lehua blossom

The legend says that one day Pele met a handsome warrior named Ohia and she asked him to marry her. Ohia, had already pledged his love to Lehua. Pele was furious  so she turned Ohia into a twisted tree. The gods took pity on Lehua and decided it was an injustice to have Ohia and Lehua separated. So, they turned Lehua into a flower on the Ohia tree so that the two lovers would be forever joined together. So remember, Hawaiian folklore says that if you pluck this flower you are separating the lovers, and that day it will rain.

What a beautiful legend…so romantic too!  Now to complete this prompt:

Our host wrote:

Gurgling valley stream
brings joy to the heart of Mother Nature –
Il Silenzio © Chèvrefeuille

l’iwi – wikimedia

 

Waterfalls
drown echoes of wildlife
ohia tree
‘l’iwi chirps a concert
sucking on a lehua

© Tournensol ’14

 

I’iwi honeycreeper sees off an Apapane

serving tea (haiku)

Japan Tour

artfully pouring tea,
a geisha dances
flute’s harmony

(c) Tournesol ’14

Carpe Diem Sparkling Stars “tea”

soothing tea (haiku)

I love sipping tea in porcelain tea cups. My great aunt bequeathed her collections to my father and I now have them in the same curio my Auntie Mae O’Donnell had. Although the tradition is on my Father’s side, my aunt being Irish, my mother taught me how to brew my tea as young as five. She would let me drink it in espresso cups which was just right for my tiny fingers.

My grandson loved to drink tea as well and would choose his tea cup whenever it was tea time. One day I invited my friend and her daughter who was grandson`s playdate. Well! I set up their tea cups with the tea pot brewing their tea. Ah, the cute things they do at five. I doubt he would want to even admit doing this now that he is 10.

I had a dear friend living next door when we were raising the children. I would often tuck in the children and run off to spend the rest of the evening with her sipping tea for hours. We had an understanding…when I`d call to say I was coming over, she would put on the kettle so when I arrived the water would be ready for my tea.

I find tea to be soothing. It is a lovely social ritual and different in many parts of the world but mostly, I like the subtle comfort it brings, the aroma of herbs, fruits and flora. Some teas are quite eccentric with a flower that expands in a special transparent tea cup. Tea is often a nice desert after a meal. How do you like your tea?

served in fine china,

floral and herbal teas

soothing the soul

(c) Tournesol ’14

Carpe Diem Sparkling Stars “Tea”

Pearly grey isn’t so bad (haibun)

Things rarely turn out as I imagine. This is sometimes best for what joy, discoveries and excitement would I find if my life was all mapped out. I’d be like a peg on a wall map. My need to control would actually make me a slave of my making. Do I get disappointed with the outcomes of life’s events? Of course I do many times. The heartaches, the disappointments and the self-degradation are part of life and in some ways who I am. I am a product of my past and life experiences. How I make of it, is still my choice. We always have choices…not always in abundance. I may have to choose for a pearly grey from a drab grey but still, I have a choice. And with the darkness of despair how else would I be blinded by the beauty of the glowing stars as well as golden sun? If I have doubts about love and being loved, I meet exuberance when I am embraced by those who do love me. It may come from someone I have not been waiting and then that makes it a double bonus cherished and forever imprinted on my heart.

I am a daydreamer by day and by night. Many times I cannot tell where a dream started or where a fantasy ended. And is that important? When life takes too long to show its glowing stars, I escape into stories I devour for days and days. And more recently, I dip into my consciousness and write what transpires from many escapades in delusions and fantasies, me, myself my muse and I.

© Clr ’14

 skies weep,
autumn showers
paths shimmer

© Clr ’14

raindrops
on golden leaves
hold me hostage

autumn wins

tints compete
greys lose race,
autumn scoffs

© Clr ’14
© Clr ’14

mediocre mouse
corn field plays
bumblebee
dreaming on canvas
beauty penned at night

 © Tournesol ’14

 MindLoveMisery’sMenagerie  Heeding Haiku with HA

Bones (senryû)

Originally posted at my blogspot at Tournesol dans un jardin, Bones

Bones 

wildflowers
emerald blankets covering
beds of bones

*

beds of bones
sounds of wailing children
haunting the night

*

haunting the night
smell of death and venom
barbarians’ breath

© Tournesol ’14

Fallen leaf (haibun)

(c) Clr '13
(c) Clr ’13

Check my latest post on my Blogspot, Fallen Leaf (haibun) at Tournesol dans un Jardin

 

A story and haiku both written in English and in French.

False hope (shadorma/senryû)

Originally posted at Tournesol dans un Jardin at BlogSpot.

When I saw this photo taken by Georgia at Basket and Sekhmet’s Library, I had to smile.  I had taken a phto of 2 pay phones in the Métro last Spring.  The fact that these are near such a lovely green space stirred contradictions…beauty, ugliness, pleasure and pain and this is what my muse came up with for  Bastet’s Shadorma Prompt at MindLoveMiserysMenagerie.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

(shadorma)

Assaults lurk
In the dead of night
behind trees
far from phones
cyclists never heard her screams
would have dialed for help.

(senryû)

predators always
study their territory
and their prey.

(shadorma)

phones by parks
gives false illusions
of safety
late at night
listen up! one`s never safe
when monsters still breathe

© Tournesol ’14

Now to make this fun a little and give me more of a challenge, I am adding my photos of these phones in the Métro. Having looked at them, my muse seems fixated on sad affairs.

 

© Clr '14 Montreal Métro Pay Phone
© Clr ’14 Montreal Métro Pay Phone

 (shadorma)

unused phones
 ever see someone
actually
Use a phone?
subways are sometimes seedy
all’s in the open

(senryû)

people make believe
blind to sordid actions
“I ain’t seen nothin’”

(shadorma)

Unless there`s
a Samaritan
does good deeds
calls for help
shouts out loud scaring monsters
back into their hole.

(tilus)

Wherever you go, bring
along a
friend.

© Tournesol ’14

Originally posted at Tournesol dans un Jardin, by Cheryl-Lynn Roberts

Couples (Carpe Diem – Tan Renga Challenge #47 “How rare the sight”

This prompt is a tan renga challenge. Our host, Chèvrefeuille at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai,  has chosen a haiku written by Magical Mystical Teacher (MMT).

It was her response on this haiku by Basho:

how rare!
on leaving the mountain
the first eggplant

MMT’s response haiku was the following:

how rare the sight—
yellow blossoms brushing
the sky with light

© MMT

now we are to write a tan renga two lines of 7 syllables to this haiku. Our host`s tan renga is here:

how rare the sight—
yellow blossoms brushing
the sky with light (MMT)
I always will love her
underneath the Laburnum (Chèvrefeuille)

I struggled with various responses because I had several images of “yellow blossoms” from my personal life. So I broke it down to two and here they are:

(c) Clr ’14

 

(c) Clr ’14

 

 

Across the street from the church at my hometown, there is a small garden by the river, with various flowers. I remember taking a picture in June of the lovely yellow lilies and wished I could come back later in the summer to catch the flora at its peak in blossoming. Well, I did not but here is snapshots from June.

 

(c) Clr ’14

 

(c) Clr ’14

 

 

how rare the sight—
yellow blossoms brushing
the sky with light   (MMT)
Across the church, newly weds
yellow lilies cheer them on.
(c) Tournesol ’14

Of course there are also lovely daisies and sun roots in my friend’s garden in Bromont facing several mountains. This is where we went to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary last Sunday. A huge tent was pitched next to the Willow tree…what a lovely day celebrating such a lovely couple. To this day, I have never met a loving couple like these two people. You can feel the love they share. They still cuddle and always hold hands sitting close together.

how rare the sight—
yellow blossoms brushing
the sky with light  (MMT)
Underneath the Willow tree
sun roots scan the mountains.
(c) Tournesol ’14

Originally posted  at Tournesol dans un Jardin

Carpe Diem Tan Renga Challenge #47, MMT’s “how rare the sight”