Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out
Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.
Open up to the Roof.
Make a new watermark on your excitement
And love.
Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.
Change rooms in your mind for a day.
city sounds scream;
woman at the Métro door
chants the same dream
silent donations
the homeless and the poor
commuters pass by
robotic and bored
not even a glance
drifters and panhandlers
rarely have a chance.
days are all the same
chaotic silent hum
monotonous blends
Aw but the night changes everything! How she longs for sunsets and beyond, watching the sky change. Renoir and Degas learned from the great Master…
May all beings everywhere be happy and free, and may the thoughts, words, and actions of my own life contribute in some way to that happiness and to that freedom for all. Peace, Peace, Peace.
In 2009 she moved to Montréal and the French translation of The Road by Cormac McCarthy(2006) had just come out. Her manager told her about the book, so she decided to read the original novel in English. It stunned her how her manager kept saying how many people enjoyed this book, so she pursued. Each chapter was still dark and depressing and by the time she finished the book all she could think was, “That was a waste of my time. I can think of many things to do to feel depressed that takes less energy.”
Now she is reading 1984, George Orwell (1949). She never read it in school or college like many of her colleagues but perhaps the timing is right. She started reading it in December but had to stop for awhile since it was so disturbing. It reminded her a bit of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, another novel that took months to complete…so depressing but well written.
If one looks at the news, reads articles on the internet and the election results of her neighbours in the South, it all seems to come together in a very very bad way.
Troiku
The Road
nineteen-eighty-four
the spirit dies
The road
disturbing nightmare
abuse of power
nineteen-eighty-four
Trumped up lies
making history
the spirit dies
stripped of free thinking
in a shadow world
Our host, Chèvrefeuille, at Carpe Diem Haiku Kai, published the two winners of the Autumn Kukai last week. I have to say the winners’ masterpieces truly inspired me today. I find haiku is like an abstract painting. The artist knows what he or she is seeing and feeling at that very moment. The reader is like the admirer of the artist’s work, seeing and feeling the words painted on the canvas.
Both haiku inspired me to write. I could not help but see myself in the moment of each ku. Starting with the runner up, Sara McNulty who is a gifted poetess writing waka as well as other forms. I find her poems make you stop…and think.
steaming gold on chilled October evening mug of hot cider
Such a lovely and colourful image I see and remember coming home from school shuffling through falling leaves. The crisp air a sign of the season and walking into GrandMaman’s kitchen…
I’m reminded of November, where November 1st, All Saints’ Day seems to set the stage. Where saints are remembered and their ghosts hover over cemeteries and barren parks. Where naked trees have shed their colours and long bare arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross, weighs on our hearts. November days, damp and cold has not seen the first snow yet to soften the blow of endings.
tearful skies
November rains
say goodbye
And now, the winner’s haiku, Hamish Gunn who is a published author, storyteller and poet, writes a haiku that speaks to me. Yesterday, I wrote an entry in my personal journal on another blog and “letting go” seems to be a sign the universe is telling me in so many ways.
Any parent knows the feeling the first day you bring your child to daycare or school…that first day, that moment you see your child walk into a new setting without you and you still remember what you felt.
Of course at any stage of their lives, you remember those moments. I remember the first day my first-born went to nursery school, the first day at Kindergarten; and then my youngest at fifteen months, going to daycare for a few hours with her brother, wailing, clinging to my breast. Her brother watching over her like a big brother feeling her sorrow tries to make her smile.
tiny tot clings
mysteries of the unknown
pleading eyes well
mother’s reassuring smile
gently lets go
I could go on and on with so many life cycles with those three perfect lines, we learn/from autumn/ letting go but I will end with my mother’s passing in late autumn, on December 2nd, 2014. Typically, in Québec, we consider December winter but officially it is not until December 22nd, the shortest day of the year. So here I share a series of haiku in a form created by our host, Chèvrefeuille, called a Troiku.
mother’s last lesson
listen to leaves falling
in autumn
mother’s last lesson
teaching me
letting go
listen to leaves falling
return one last time
to Mother Earth
Tournesol dans un Jardin 