Haiku Bones: Fleeting

poached pears moscata
you reach across the table
which birthday was it?

Wings

The photograph was taken in the chamber of Newgrange, Ireland by Fran Caffrey. on December 21st, 2003.

SUNLIGHT ENTERS THE NEWGRANGE CHAMBER
At dawn on Winter Solstice every year, just after 9am, the sun begins to rise across the Boyne Valley from Newgrange, Ireland over a hill known locally as Red Mountain. The dramatic event lasts for 17 minutes at dawn from the 19th to the 23rd of December. Given the right weather conditions, the event is spectacular.

At four and a half minutes past nine, the light from the rising sun strikes the front of Newgrange and enters into the passage through the roofbox which was specially designed to capture the rays of the sun.

For the following seventeen minutes, the beam of light stretches into the passage of Newgrange and on into the central chamber, where, in Neolithic times, it illuminated the rear stone of the central recess of the chamber. With simple stone technology, a significant astronomical event and a special time in the annual cycle was captured in a most astonishing way.



Wings

Come!
make drums of your soles
crack open your head
leave all you have worried at the gate
every thing you cannot live without.
visit terraced footings
tread points of roughness
scream closely held fears
into luminous darkness


For this is no fleeting station
but a repeat destination
a cloudless sky
curved and acrobatic
A featherless dance
five days without name
a time of empty form.

light a dark candle
at the furred edge of doubt
your breath
is my trail to you.


Winter solstice profoundly challenges our tolerance for paradox. Mary Oliver is the best companion I know to share the longest night. Solstice blessings! May the first rays of morning find a soft glow in your heart.

Starlings in Winter
by Mary Oliver

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can't imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,

even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard, I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

"Starlings in Winter" by Mary Oliver, from Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays.

Red

Thank you Bobbie of Constant Current for this week's prompt, spider webs.





Red

From a crevice
in the molding
a tiny spider
smiled
like the sun

sometimes
she slept
or kept to herself
and we understood
we were alone

Then we would soap
each other’s hair
til it stood in peaks
and clap
the rippled flanks
til the dark
echoed
through them

when we were
comfortable
with each other
she padded
onto the soap dish
a tinkling arpeggio
of legs
we held our breath
so as not
to
disturb
a
thing

One day
red was gone
the months
trailed
each other
only the web remained
collapsing
into itself
like
a storm

Migration

Migration

a folded atlas
a peregrine gaze
they are coming from summer
and traveling to summer
press dreams
like flowers
they shoulder
into distances
powered by the fat back
of summer

Silver Needle

This week's prompt is creative from Mindful Mimi.


"Creation, we are taught is not an act that happened once upon a time, once and for ever. The act of bringing the world into existence is a continuous process.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel


Silver Needle*

Crossing
the middle bridge
stockings
get caught
in rough planks
by the time
I arrive,
the water
has been resting
coddled buds
float
tiny hairs
uncoil

sit, drink
these
are the
best hours

*Silver Needle - White tea is the least processed form of tea, made from handpicked silver buds and young leaves which are steamed and dried in open air. Silver Needle (Baihao Yinzhen) is the rarest of all varieties, picked in springtime in the Fujian Mountains of China. When the buds are steeped, they yield a light and subtle sweetness.. Successive infusions release subtle qualities of the tea‘s delicate fragrance.



“I make writing as much a part of my life as I do eating or listening to music.”
Maya Angelou


Many writers have a ritual, which serves as an induction, a falling into the deep. For example, Maya Angelou wakes at five in the morning and checks into a hotel room. All pictures are removed from the walls so that there is no visual distraction. She writes on legal pads while resting on the bed with only a bottle of sherry, a deck of cards, Roget’s Thesaurus and a Bible. She leaves by early afternoon, usually with ten to twelve pages of manuscript. Ms. Angelou reflects that she uses this process to “enchant” herself.
This poem is both about crossing the waters and steeping in that place of enchantment.

starter culture

Thanks to Gautami Tripathy of Rooted for this week's prompt, reincarnation.


starter culture

she called it sour milk
placed a heavy rimmed
glass of lucidity
on the radiator
little did I know
it was a starter culture

From a childhood memory of my mother making what she called “sour milk“. A type of yogurt. Once you have the starter culture, it lives forever…or as long as you keep it going. I see this as a metaphor for infusing “culture” or essence, into life with consciousness and purpose.

Uxmal

Thanks to Nathalie of Spaced Law for this week's prompt, shift in time.

Uxmal
thrice built
groans
beneath the weight
of the living

bulky tourists
exact one more stamp
proof positive
here was maize
daily ground,
rattles shook
at a darkened sky
daughters summered
in cool grottos
fools stuttered riddles
clear as day
royalty strode across
quarried stone

This fugitive hour
I visit the ruins of your hair,
the child in your brow
I roam where your dreams are pastured
fingers spread wide
for night to pour through

how many cities
am I standing on?