Rituals
Small house. Narrow space. Competing schedules. When the day comes to an end, I carry my three-year old into a dark room where, more often than not, his older sister is already asleep, turn my phone’s flashlight on, and choose a book … or two … or three.
light reading
under the blanket tent
brown bear brown bear
Waiting
Car parked on the side of the road, I wait for my wife to finish work. Sometimes it takes five minutes. Sometimes ten. Next to a cinder block wall that hides a cemetery, there is an old tree. It leans slightly to the right, out over the road. Its roots buckle and crack the sidewalk that was paved around it. I look at it. It looks back. A gentle wind stirs.
quiet today
the old tree
waves to me
Muddy
Driving, everything that I want to say, falls into place. Then, in the space it takes to walk from my car and into the house, everything comes undone.
the slow drizzle of rain
one by one my words
become a puddle
This
Cold in the long shadows, I shiver, my head down, watching the quick feet of my dog. He doesn’t stop to smell anything. He just scurries forward, occasionally looking back, as if to say, Can we go home yet? Sure, I think. Why not. And then …
greeting me
as I turn the corner
morning sun
Limits
Talking. Yelling. Laughing. Playing. Dawn to Dusk. All day long. Endless conversations and monologues. Statements of appeal: Daddy, look at me. Daddy, look at me. No, Daddy, look at me. But suddenly, all that noise is muted.
the silence that falls
between hungry kids …
late lunch
Pit Stop
How many times have I seen them and not noticed them? Not noticed them? More like forgotten about them. Or not paid attention to them. That seems more accurate. How many times have I seen them, stood on them, walked over them, and not paid attention to them? Countless times. And then today, for some reason, here they are, louder than ever. And I find myself thinking, It’s so hard to believe that all of that really happened.
stickers on the floor …
reminders of
social distancing
Rusted
Living halfway around the world from where I grew up, sometimes I am stunned by the similarities that, out of nowhere, present themselves. A sudden smell. A random song. An awkward social interaction. A new but old product. A popular TV show. The merging of traffic. Trending ideologies. Etc.
old train tracks …
leading me back
to my childhood
All poems and images are original. If you have any comments, feedback, or suggestions, please feel free to share them.
Good to see you back! I love the explanation followed by the poetry, very interesting and makes it very clear. That last one I truly understood, having lived many years of my life overseas the smallest thing can trigger memories of your past from childhood. It's the weirdest thing, but I still have it happen today! Life passes by so quickly, it's hard to believe so many years have already passed!
Those sudden trips to the past or to things associated with a life lived before moving abroad are generally powerful and often surreal. They make you realize how just how much you’ve done.
The second half of life … or third … or quarter … let’s enjoy it.
I love reading these. I love the setups and the words below them.
Thanks. I’m always torn about adding the lead-ins because I want the poems to stand in their own, but in this blog post format, I’ve come to feel that the lead-ins are necessary.
I hope they’re written in a way that doesn’t take away from the poems. Sometimes it’s hard for me to tell.
It doesn't take away from the poems for me, in fact, I love it done this way. It's almost like seeing an artist's art process, you get a glimpse of where the final product came from, where the artist's mind was at the time of creation.
I’m glad to hear that. Thank you.
box car blue
words settle
thoughts whirl
Let's make sure we do remember, so we are not so stupid as to allow it all to happen again.
Unfortunately, the truth tellers will sound like lunatics and those who haven’t already had the experience themselves will play their part again … at some point.
If the same thing starts happening again this decade, we might see a different outcome. That would be interesting, but probably not very peaceful.
I believe the event was conditioning, among other things. Folks did stuff that harmed themselves and their children and their businesses,their schools, their communities. It will be easy to get us to do that again, we've been trained. I will have to be louder in my objections, and bolder in my non-compliance. Last time, even though I didn't do all that nonsense, I also kept my mouth somewhat shut when I saw the hostility I received.
It is so nice to have your work to savor again.
Well, with vicious emotions and arguments like, Do you want to be a grandma killer? It was hard not to fall in line. What was so hard about that was how perfectly it sat in the middle of what is right and wrong, what is and isn’t common sense, what is the best for those around you.
When you are accused of not caring about other people, or of being a murderer, it’s hard to stand your ground.
I remember when I gave in to getting vaccinated. As a teacher, it was really hard to withstand the precious of other teachers, the expectations of parents, and even to look into the eyes of students who were totally afraid of the unvaccinated. I gave in using the “I’ll do it and make the sacrifice if it means my kids don’t have to do it” logic. Which was stupid, but fortunately, I never let my kids get the shots.
This is the trap that has been set for us, pitting us against each other. Making us comply because if we don't we're seen as harming others. Great fodder for tyranny, which is, I fear, what we are being conditioned for. Most of the people I know did it all then, and would do it all again.
Whenever I complained that I was being discriminated against because of a lifestyle choice I had made regarding medical treatments, they always said
Maddening! That sentiment only made me even more determined not to do so.
Thank you for not vaccinating your children. Did they have trouble because of that? When I think of what we did to our children, I am especially disturbed.
No. Fortunately, they were just at or under the age where they started recommending it, and for whatever reason, they didn’t make it mandatory for US citizens to be vaccinated when returning to the U.S. so everything worked out just fine. I was dead set about not having them vaccinated, but I didn’t have to draw any lines or be confrontational either.
Now it’s all blown over and nobody knows who has or hasn’t been vaccinated. Crazy, isn’t it?
Absolutely bonkers. I would not say it has all blown over though. I know a young mother who won't allow her own mother to visit her children unless the grandmother has had the most recent booster. The grandmother has now had eight or more shots. It should come as no suprise by now that the mother also has covid, at at least feels sick and has tested positive, right now. The poor woman has been non stop sick with covid, or RSV. Never the flu, oh no it's never the same disease we've all had multiple times over our lifetimes and recovered from. No, this is the big bad covid. She is walking around her home with a mask on so she doesn't infect her husband, and is very angry at him for not wearing a mask himself. She's a highly intelligent woman.
All that nonsense could come back with one press release.
This was beautiful. I was caught up in the relatable rhythm. Creative non-fiction meets poetry. I've not seen this done before. It's a highly effective framework, and creative tool. Your post moved me - made me wistful... and I'm still very much living this life with two teenage boys.
Haibun is a very old art form. I won’t pretend to know all the details of it or its history, but I’m pretty sure it’s as old as haiku itself. @dbooster is the guy to ask about that.
Two teenage boys, you’re head must be spinning;-)
I’m glad to hear this made you wistful. You’re the second person to have used that word. It strikes me as quite the compliment. Thank you!
It really is wistful. I had this sense of longing for and missing something I hadn't lost yet... it was more a sense of time passing and knowing my kids are growing up so fast - wanting to hold on to every moment and make it last. So proud of their growing independence, yet feeling that tug and ache as you realise you are not needed in the same way anymore. Each time they 'change' it's like saying goodbye to a version of them and me that I won't see again. So, there is a reminiscence that overlays the excitement of new things and the new ever-growing little people I get to know all over again. Time stretchers required, please! That's just how your post hit for me... Be mindful of every moment - including every lego-trodden squeal - It's bitter-sweet this parenting thing :-)
I had not heard of Haibun before - I am definitely going to explore that. I love learning new things, so thank you so much for sharing this.
Thank you for reading. Getting responses like yours are the greatest gift a creative person can get.
There are haiku, haibun, and haiga. There is also something called renga, and another poem type called senryu.
The ku in haiku could be translated into phrase, and the bun in haibun means something more like sentence/prose, and the ga in haiga means image, so it’s a haiku poem paired with an image. Traditionally these images would have been ink washes or drawings but these days the image can be a photograph or anything else. It’s a pretty broad and open art form actually, haiku.
The difference between haiku and senryu, which is sometimes easy to spot and sometimes not, is that haiku are more focused on nature while senryu are more focused on human experience. Honestly, I don’t feel that I can truly make the distinction myself, but some people are quite confident in their ability to tell you if a poem is haiku or senryu.
I like to leave those distinctions to others and just keep writing poems that I hope are interesting.
Very interesting! It's wonderful to read creatives who challenge themselves to try something new. I think the key is to put yourself on the page. Human vulnerability, experience, thoughts, and emotions are all relatable. You present them in a magical way. You have now given me more reading and research to do. By the way, this is samsmith1971 curating Hive Creatives for The Ink Well. Have a lovely weekend, @boxcarblue
Thanks, Sam. It’s funny that you mention putting yourself on the page. After letting it sit on my shelf for sixteen years, I started working with “The Artist’s Way” at the start of the new year. That book mentions something similar: showing up at the page.
Doing the work, day in and day out, and letting yourself be you, both are important.
After three years of mostly writing daily haiku, I’ve found that any subject is worthy of being put on the page. I think that might be one of the biggest takeaways I’ve gotten from this daily practice and writing form. It’s been very freeing.
I have always liked 'haiku' but had never heard of 'haibun' before today. I like these, very much! Even the prose seems to have a gentle rhythm to it, and expresses so much in so few syllables. I am grateful to @riverflows for reblogging, as this post was one of the highlights of my day! 😊
Wow. Thank you. Writing and sharing is such a funny thing. Why do we do it? I don’t know. Is it worth the time it takes (and sometimes heartache)? I don’t know.
Lately, I’ve been subscribing more and more to the idea that we all have unique perspectives and experiences and if we don’t share them, those perspectives and experiences that are uniquely ours will disappear from the world forever, never to return again. In that sense, it’s almost our duty to create and share those creations.
Your comment seems to validate this way of thinking.
Haibun, as far as I know, is as old as haiku itself. I think that it encompasses basically any kind of prose that is paired with one or more haiku, but to be honest, I’m not entirely sure.
I’m not a stickler for rules.
Your reply spawned a haiku in my head:
gently with our words
we can touch one another
ripples forever
That’s great. Apparently, haiku written in response to their haiku is also a thing, although I can’t remember the name for it.
I could be wrong here, but I think haiku was born out of the renga, which was a collaborative poem written by two or more people in a call and response sort of fashion.
Basically, one person would write a short poem and another person would answer it with a short poem, and the process would continue. In some traditions, the goal was to have 100 responses (including the original poem).
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STOPto and end *typo <3
Not on your work! Your words are too beautiful for typos.
*nods... still reading
Typos? Here? You must be crazy!-)
Thanks for pointing them out. It’s amazing how good they are at hiding in plain site.
I'll do my best to be your other eyes
Sometimes eyes can be flaky
Much appreciated.
Same when I am out walking. But you say it better <3
You always make me wistful, pensive and weepy in the best possible way.
Such talent.
Keep writing 🌱
*typo - "sometimes I (am) stunned" & A(n) awkward social interaction
That’s such a nice thing to say. Thank you!
Stunning. You make the mundane stretch of a domestic life beautiful. The silence in between the shouting kids, the demands. Echoes of the past - I still get annoyed if people stand an inch behiind me, silently screaming THERE ARE FUCKING STICKERS, DUDE! You speak to how our thoughts drift even whilst busy with the day to day - into history, poetry, beauty - and death.
These days, I feel like I’m spending a little too much time in the drift. Being present is sometimes a springboard into the imagination:-)
It very much is. Less phones, more daydream in the spaces between..
Once upon a time, people could just sit on a bench and look around them, at the sky or the street, a space on the wall, and not be thought of as weird or crazy …
But it wasn’t that long ago.
It’s so eye opening talking to my kids about what I did growing up, back when virtually nobody had a computer or access to the internet, and all of these internet dependent devices and services didn’t exist. My kids can’t even begin to imagine what the world was like.
I'm glad we had that at least, because we know all we need to do to return to it is put down our phones and wait for the magic. My son, when he visited at Christmas, seemed to always have his phone out and he's 28. I find it irritating - it says to me that his phone is better company that hismother, which just can't be true, can it? My sister and brother in law just had a week in Hong Kong and they said everyone was utterly glue to their phones the whole time. How do people experience the real world at all? Daydreaming is a lost art, it seems. Yet you and I clearly know how much potential can be in staring into space. I can recall so many train journeys just watching the world go by - if I had three wishes, I'd seriously consider taking away our mini computer nannys for THE ENTIRE WORLD. If you want the internet, go home, get on the computer. You have an hour per day. The rest of the time, live, create, dream. Of course, I know I'm being totally idealistic here...
It would certainly be interesting to see how that played out, if you could make all the phones go away.
There’s a municipality in Japan somewhere that passed an ordinance a few months back limiting residents to two hours of screen time a day (it might have been one, come to think of it). I think the time limit was placed on personal time, so it didn’t include work or school usage.
I wonder how that’s working out.