Jewel Box

Jewel Box
“Harvest moon: around the pond I wander and the night is gone.” Matsuo Basho

my mind was turning over the loss
of you as if the loss were an object
in my hand, holding this way and that –
sitting watching the harvest moon
huge in the night sky –
sorting and sifting the way
I used to pick through my grandmother’s
jewel box, looking for the perfect piece
to sparkle on my childish breast.
but the box is empty now.
nothing but dust within.

harvest moon 9/13/2019

The Kitchen is Empty

If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK) or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of resources.

The Kitchen is Empty
‘I’m never a reliable narrator, unbiased or objective.” “I have a tattoo on my arm, that says, in ancient Greek, ‘I am certain of nothing.’ I think that’s a good operating principle.” Anthony Bourdain

the boy at the beach has traveled to places
we could not imagine.
the stars no longer follow his parents
as they drive through the night to their home
from the Jersey shore he so dearly loved.
The kitchen is empty –
his great story telling voice like
dark chocolate ganache is silent.
his narrow face no longer wrinkles with laughter
or sorrow nor do his eyes peer out to the end
of the horizon, seeing things only
he could see.
The kitchen is empty –
the knives lying in their coffin drawers,
stories are silent –
no longer being told with
understanding and humor,
with sorrow and truth.
the kitchen is empty.
the kitchen is empty.

Cherry Blossom Snow – sakura no yuki

For Anmol’s prompt over at dVerse – relationships and sensuality.  This is an “extreme” haibun being less that 65 words.  Actually, all haibun need to be short as in the original.  Haibun are true accountings ended with a seasonal haiku. Also posted on Real Toads Tuesday Platform.

Cherry Blossom Snow
“The heart was made to be broken.” Oscar Wilde

He was the most beautiful man I had ever seen, like an ancient Samurai. I fell in love at first sight. I was plain and short yet somehow, he fell in love with me. Long years of intense love and then, he returned to Japan. My heart broke.
cherry blossoms
fell like snow in the spring
caressing my skin goodbye

Haibun – At Rest

Today is day 27 of OMIRWOPAN.  Only three more days to go.  Today Margaret is our prompter over at Real Toads.  She attended an art exhibit of works by children and obtained permission to photograph some of the art for use with this prompt.  No names of the kids are given but the ages and grades are listed under the pictures.  The ages range from elementary to high school.  I picked one called The Bones. This is a haibun with a nonstandard haiku ending it.

10th grade 15 yrs.

At Rest
You died June 18. Every day I watched you dying – slowly and painfully. Every day I prayed for you to die while feeling sadness at losing you forever. You were silent by March. The vampire that sucked out your memories took away your life, your love – all except your knowing of me. Me you never forgot. In July I received your ashes. I sat in the car with the box holding your ashes cradled in my arms and wept. Then in the heat of summer I made the pilgrimage farther south – to the country cemetery where our ancestors lay under the big oaks and magnolia trees.

When we arrived at our hometown I rode you around the streets of your memories – past our old home place, past the high school from which you graduated. past the hospital where you gave birth to me. Then onward until we reached the country. At the cemetery I walked with you and took a trowel and in your mother’s grave I dug. I dug a deep hole in the brick hard red soil. sweat dripping down onto the earth like tears. At last I had the hole deep enough.
I poured your ashes into the hole and placed a red carnation on top – your favorite flower. I replaced the earth and tamped it down. I tucked the earth around your ashes as I used to tuck you in for sleep. I built a small stone cairn over your resting place. Be at peace mama. I love you. And then the long drive alone back up north.
sweltering heat – I
buried your ashes in the red soil –
a lone cardinal sang

copyright kanzensakura

 

dVerse Poets Pub: Meet the Bar with Expressionism

Bjorn is hosting the Pub today and prompting us to write poems based upon Expressionism.  Whew.  I hope this one comes close.  Come join us at:  Meet the Bar with Expressionism

Cuts like a Knife
The sky is so blue overhead
And the clouds so white.
Yet the wind cuts through you like…
a hot knife through warm butter
scissors through paper
a katana through silk…

And you. You.
You go through me like a
hot knife through cream cheese or…
like a katana through that thin branch
On my cherry tree –
you slash and slice and
and the blossoms fall
to the ground.
the birds peck now among them
finding the worms that burrow
underneath.

a lone crow circles overhead
in that blue winter sky.
he cuts through the sky
like a katana slices through fog.

still from Last Samurai

dVerse Poets Pub – Haibun Monday #29

We have a guest prompter today at dVerse.  Come find out who….hint:  he’s from Australia.  The theme is “waiting”.   https://dversepoets.com/2017/01/23/haibun-monday-29/

The Waiting Game
You are gone. You got on that big plane and it took you back to Kyoto. You had lived in the US long enough to teach medicine at Duke, to move to Richmond and become a forensic pathologist, long enough to rescue me from an abusive relationship and for us to fall totally deeply wildly in love with each other. Twenty years in the US and then you moved back to Kyoto. What were you waiting for? Why did it take you so long to return? Was it me? I waited long nights for you to come home after taking apart the dead to find answers, to give names to the nameless, to convict the guilty and vindicate the innocent. You stayed long enough to teach me kendo, to use a katana, to properly cook rice, to learn the sensation of cherry blossoms falling on naked skin. I taught you to properly fry chicken, to savor a fresh summer tomato, the sensation of ice cube held within lips slipping over your skin.  I waited for you to return; day after day after month after year after season. You wrote every week and I threw them all away. You waited on my reply. I waited for your return. We waited and waited and…

cherry blossoms on
naked skin – lips on mine –
seasons wait forever

The Necklace

Open link night at dVerse tonight. You can submit any one poem of your choice. Come join us. Bjorn is tending the pub all the way over in Sweden!  He has a special guest today – Sean Michael – a prisoner in the California penal system who frequently posts on dVerse.  Open Link Night #178 – Saving Grace

The Necklace
After you left I kept thinking you would return.
And because you so loved the small beauties
and the simple things, I kept the memories.
I wanted to embed them in molten glass
and string them on a fine gold chain
that you could wear under your clothes
close to your heart,
to pull the chain up and look at those simple things
and see them through my eyes that saw them without you:
the way the mist lay close to the ground
in the late autumn,
or the sound of birds the morning of the first snow.
The tiny new kittens boneless and blind
opening their pink mouths and silently hissing.
The last string of geese flying south
in the apricot dawn,
the velvet eyes of the young heifer in my friend’s barn
and the warm smell of the animals and hay,
the first tiny pink cherry blossom opening slowly
in the cold of early spring
or the ever spreading ripples in the koi pond
made by slow rain.
you never returned.
and the necklace of memories sleeps
in a small wooden box
never touched by your hand or seen by your eyes.

Poetic Spouses – Kiku

Another entry for dVerse Poet’s Pub where Kim is inspiring us to write of a poetic spouse, preferably of someone dead.  I could not resist doing a tanka for Kiku, the first wife of Kobayashi Issa and mother of his first two children who both died tragically young.  Their deaths inspired Issa to pen:  Tsuyu no yo wa tsuyu no yo nagari sari nagara:
this dewdrop world –
is a dewdrop world
and yet, and yet…

Kiku
I loved you in the
warmth of our love – I will love
you in the coldness –
our children dissolved like dew
on the edge of summer grass

 

 

dVerse Poetics: keiu

Walt is hosting Poetics today. He wishes us to write about summer drought or too much rain. This can include harmful rain or writers block – any interpretation of drought or downpour. Come visit us!  https://dversepoets.com/2016/07/26/tuesday-poetics-drought-or-deluge/

keiu*
Almost five years to the day,
I met you.
Five years since the love of my life
Returned to Japan – just left in a flurry
Of heat and fire – like the black dragon he was.
Days without love, weeks without love,
Years without love.
And almost five years to the day
You stepped into my life.
Eyes the color of a summer blue sky.
You spoke.
A gentle rain began to fall.
My soul began to bloom again.
Summer heat turned to
Summer rain – sweet and welcome –
Dried soul blossomed green.

copyright KanzenSakura

*Japanese for welcome rain

Open Link Night #170 – Hazasakura

This is posted for Open Link Night at dVerse.  Come visit to read a variety of poems by some talented writers!

public domain image

Hazasakura*

so long we wait for the blooms –
through the long winter watching the
tiny bits of reddish brown bud grow larger –
through snow, dark days, moonless nights
the buds grow larger and one day
they burst into bloom.
Too brief their time of beauty.
By the end of the day blossoms fade
and blow away in the wind or drift
to the ground in sakura snow.
A hard rain this morning.
Petals washed down and ground into the mud
by the relentless raindrop armies
churned into oblivion.
A walk down the lane to the creek this afternoon –
fresh smell of pine needles and cedar
from the surrounding woods –
the usually clear water muddy from the rain.
I try to see my image but only see shadowy
reflections from the trees.
I return home already missing the cherry blossoms.
I stuff my hands in my pockets
having to accept the truth of cherry blossoms:
the blossoms have to die so the green leaves can live.
It’s a long wait until next Hanami.

*hazasakura – term for green cherry trees after the blossoms have fallen.

Haibun Monday #11 – Reach Out

I am hosting the dVerse Poets Pub for Haibun Monday. My prompt was inspired by the new “Call a Swede” in honor of the 250th anniversary ban on censorship in Sweden. You call a number and a randomized Swede will answer and talk to you about whatever you wish. I did it and had a great time. I then was reminded how easily we often seem to talk to strangers rather than those closest to us. So the haibun prompt is “communication” – to write a haibun about a conversation, email, phone call that changed you somehow, to write about someone you haven’t but need to speak with, uncomfortable silences, happy reconnections. I imagine there will be some interesting takes on this prompt. It is an unusual subject for a haibun but I tell you all truly, it was one that weighed upon me. I lost three dear friends in 2015: suicide, COPD, drunk driver. I wish I could call them and say hello. I thank you all for your support of my blog and work through the years. You are all dear to me.

public domain image

Last Call
“Couched in our indifference like waves upon the shore, you can hear the ocean roar…” Dangling Conversation, Paul Simon

I recognized the number in my Caller ID – it was the government agency for whom I had worked a decade earlier. I had kept up with several of my co-workers there through the years and knew their numbers both at the agency and their homes. When I answered, there was silence and then the attempt to speak and finally the words, “It’s bad. Karl is dead. He committed suicide and his brother found him yesterday. Plans are…”. I mumbled a few words and thanked Sarah for calling me. I had tried calling Karl several times the past couple of weeks and left messages on his voice mail which were not returned. I had decided I was going by over the coming weekend. Karl was notorious for going into hiding and only going to work and not speaking to anyone unless he was confronted at home. I actually was not surprised at the news. Grieved, saddened, shaken – but I had been expecting this since I first met him thirty years earlier. The love of his life had died of AIDS and Karl had never fully recovered.

An hour later, I knew there was a call I had to make. I had not spoken to this man since he had boarded a plan and returned to his home in Japan. In that odd manner of life, Karl had first been my friend and then the two of them met through me and became fast immediate friends. Opposites but brothers of the soul. One a disciplined passionate Japanese man who played the piano as if his soul was on fire and gregarious. The other a sensitive, wounded gay man who harbored deep silences and only let a precious few into his life. The two remained friends visiting each other yearly after the Japanese man had returned to his country. Karl kept the two of us apprised of each other – nope, still not married, she is beginning to date, he dates sometimes, calling us both idiots and loving us both until finally Karl gave the news, she is married to a great guy, a good man.

And now, I had to make that call. He knew it was me when he saw the number in his Caller ID for the first words out of his mouth were “What is wrong?” And then I told him Karl was dead. Silence across thousands of miles. And finally on his end, “Does his brother still live at the same address? What are the plans? I will try to come.” Awkwardly I said I was sorry to call with such news. With his usual to the point, words slicing like his deftly wielded katana, “Oddyseus’ wife waited.” I pulled my own sword and said, “And she was his wife and he always meant to return.” The silence on the other end let me know I had drawn blood with that last stroke. I disconnected the phone. Later my husband broke my silence as I worked at sharpening and honing my kitchen blades. All he said was, “I love you.” And it was everything I needed to hear.

silence in the spring –
cherry blossoms are gone – birds
sleep among the branches

Autumn is Fall(ing) to Sleep

We have a guest pubtender, De Jackson, at d’Verse today who is prompting us to write with the enjambment poetic device. Please come visit and read all the varied submissions for this interesting device.  http://dversepoets.com/2015/11/05/lets-get-jambin/

Autumn is Fall(ing) to Sleep
Autumn is fall(ing) to sleep and
the creek at the foot of the hill is not
the gurgling child it was. Slower now
and grey around the edges. Stones left
behind from summer flooding dusty
and sad at being left behind. The frogs
have vanished and dragonflies
with-drawn to their secret blue cave in
the sky. Autumn is fall(ing) to sleep
withered sere leaves drift aimlessly
in the occasional breeze. (Hum)ming birds
have flown farther south to the land of eternal
jewels – treasures of another age –
placed carefully
in a museum of warmth and sun.
One night soon the stars will freeze in
the blackness of winter. Frosted morning grass
will crunch under my feet as I won(wan)der
shoulders hunched hands in my pockets
knowing going on without you is like
trying to thread a needle with one hand
with frozen fingers. Autumn is fall(ing) to sleep.