Stargazing Rabbit

For Day Six of NAPOWRIMO = Kerry’s Prompt

Stargazing Rabbit
Jason Limberg

>Stargazing Rabbit
“My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.”
Richard Adams, Watership Down

Under the moon in the argent lighit,
a rabbit slowly hops into view
as I sit on my back steps
breathing in the scents of gardenia and honeysuckle.
The sky is a perfectly clear June night.
Gazing upwards, I look at the stars –
pinpoints of light against the black sky.
the rabbit grazes quietly in the bed of clover
on my lawn. I forbid my husband to cut it down
for visitors such as this.
I watch as it twitches its ears
and it too looks upward, toward the stars.
We both of us together gaze at the stars –
an owl drifts overhead but ignores the rabbit and me.
the dew falls and the air becomes steamy.
The rabbit goes back to munching.
I look up at the stars again and when I look back
at the rabbit, it is gone.
I begin to cry. A friend of mine committed suicide today.

THE AFTER BITS This rabbit brought to mind how I sat at night pondering the why of a friend’s suicide last June.

 

 

Real Toads: Artistic Impressions

Today at Real Toads, Margaret is prompting us with various pieces of art work from the Asheville, NC county fair, all done by Amateurs! Come join us to look at the delightful pics and read the poems. http://withrealtoads.blogspot.com/2017/10/artistic-interpretations-with-margaret.html I have chosen to write a haibun finished with a real haiku – seasonal word (kigo) and cutting word (kireji) included in the haiku.

 

artwork – Asheville County Fair

Autumn has come at last to the South. The sky is the perfect clear blue of the season – aki no sora. A bit of a chill in the air but no frost as of yet. Leaves are starting to turn – slowly. There is more gold, red, and orange among the green than there was last week. At night, owls hoot gently and float silently through the trees, looking for food.
blue skies stretch over
trees – colors form a rainbow –
bright stars warm the sky

artwork Asheville County Fair

dVerse Poets Pub: Haibun Monday – Night Sky

Today I am the pubtender over at dVerse Poet’s Pub and it is Haibun Monday!  Today we will be writing about the night sky – watching the stars, meteor showers, making love under the night sky, the creatures of the night under the sky, dreams of the night sky, how it affects us – in other words, the night sky!  We’ve written about the day sky, the moon, and now we are writing about the night sky.  I hope you all will enjoy and will take the time to travel over to dVerse Poets Pub for some most excellent reading.  A haibun is a non-fiction prosimetric form based on the original works of Basho and his travelogue, Road to the Northwest.  It is usually a short paragraph or two ended with a real haiku (not just a 5-7-5 or Americanized sentences).  They can be varied and so very interesting.  The Pub opens today at 3:00 pm EST. https://dversepoets.com/2016/09/05/twinkle-twinkle/

Bathing in a Meteor Shower
It was almost 35 years to the day since I had been in the Mojave Desert gazing up at the night sky watching the Perseid meteor showers. Now here I was lying in my lawn chair looking up at the night sky, gazing and waiting for the showers to come. They were supposed to be at their peak tonight between 1:00 and 4:00 a.m. I had been sitting in the lawn chair for about an hour and my eyes were fully adjusted to the night. Around me the hot summer night hummed and thrummed with the sound of insects and the peeping of tree frogs and the bwaaaaaamp of the the larger frogs. I noticed a delicate clucking sound coming from the large oak tree at the base of our property – the family of owls were awake and ready to start on their nightly hunts for food. A high pitched squeaking let me know the bats were out and about with their nightly insect eating activities. How different from the extreme silence of the Mojave!

I patiently lay there looking up. Distant gray clouds ghosted against the black sky reminding me that the clouds were always out, anytime of day. The sky was clear, black, and full of stars. I saw the first meteor streak towards the line of the horizon. A few moments, another flash. And then – one after the other, meteors were flashing and falling several at once every few seconds. I was excited and sat up straighter so I could better watch the display. After a couple of hours, the display died down. I was amazed that a meteor the size of a grain of sand could create such a display. I was always amazed at how the debris from the Swift-Tuttle Comet could cause such zinging about of light and how this year, 35 years later, it was again a peak showing of the Perseids. In the 35 years since I had last viewed this display, I had loved and lost an incredible Samurai lover, changed my vocation, and gotten married to a man as amazing as the spectacular meteor showers I was once again watching. I smiled in the darkness. Life was good. Life was amazing.

from the vast ocean
of the summer sky – bits of
sand lit the night sky.

free public domain NASA photo Perseid meteor showers

Quadrille 11 – Stars

Another Quadrille for De’s word prompt of “Spill” over at dVerse.   https://dversepoets.com/2016/06/13/quadrille-11/

Stars
spilling across the night sky
stars –
we can look at the blackness
still see the light –
there is a star for each of us
a bit of silent music
a blithe spirit of hope
a reminder that no matter what
we all are one

Hazy moon – おぼろ月

posting for Frank Tassone’s Haikai Challenge #20, hazy moon.

 

Black spring night sky – I
descry through blacker branches
oborozuki

 

永遠の愛 (Eternal Love)

She sat on the back steps of their house, the night

Warm and moist, like the bath she had earlier taken.

Black sky full of stars above, the koi pond , black and still below.

He came and sat beside her, missing her presence by His side.

“Can’t sleep?” She shook her head, her glasses

Reflecting ambient light.

Silence.

He took another tack.

“So, here is my shirt.  The mystery of the missing

Sakura Matsuri shirt is solved.”

Silence.

“You have on a shirt and no

Bottom.  I have on a bottom And no top.

What would the neighbors say?”

Silence.

And then bitterly she said:  “They would say, What

Is that extremely handsome

Japanese man doing with that

extremely ugly Caucasian woman?

Like I hear your friends whisper

When you cannot hear.”

He picked up the end

Of her braid and pulled off the tie.

Gently and patiently he

Unwound and spread her hair,

like a shawl, over her shoulders.

He looked up at the sky.

 He looked at her, small and hunched beside him.

He took her hair in his hands and rubbed his face against

Its silk.  He breathed in its perfume.

“I will love you until the stars come

To live in the night sky of your hair.

I will love you until they burn out and turn cold.

 I will love you until they turn to dust and

are blown throughout the entire

Universe.  I will love you with last my breath.

Watashi wa anata o eien ni aishimasu.”

She looked up at him and smiled.  “I can sleep now.”

He smiled and stood and reached for

Her hand.  “Then come and let us sleep.”

December moon

Luminescent pearl

Worn by the night sky, baroque

Purity enchants.

 

12/12/12 12:12 am

12/12/12  12:12 AM

 

Alone at my post –

My Household snug in warm beds.

Neighborhood silent.

 

Warmly wrapped I gaze

At the night sky.  The Twins

Glow and pulsate to

 

Their own stellar beat.

Fireworks stream against the black

Sky.  Celebrating

 

Celestial joy.

White yellow blue red green – My

Eyes cannot follow

 

The steady bursts of

Glitter strewn by their Maker

To dazzle the few

 

Like me who look

For joy and light in the dark

Places – and find it.