Tag: Haibun

September’s Haibun

On By dorahakIn Poems18 Comments

September rolls around like a pumpkin, like a pumpkin on a skateboard careening round the corner past the tail-end of August, catching me off guard every year, and I’m knocked off my feet and on to my keester, a pile of leaves cascading around me, muffling the laughter of neighborhood children.

blackbirds call – in the yellow orange light a morning shines chill and pure

It’s the memories that leave me agape more than the innumerable pumpkins, the shedding trees and goblin children already looking forward to October and All Hallow’s Eve. So many crowd into the season’s turn, old faces smiling from the theater screen of autumn’s cerulean sky, busy with the doings of a golden declarative moment. Yet one stands out.

a half-remembered song – a black-limbed tree of blackbirds scatter in the wind

My Indian parents arriving in New York with six-year-old me in hand with silk Singapore jackets on our backs from a well-traveled in-law and my mother walking home with groceries and fainting on the sidewalk from hypothermia in a freak snowstorm. Nothing quelled her spirit though. Ever. Her Christian faith was unshakeable. Besides, we were in America, land of freedom, land of dreams, land of promise. Later a church fixed us up with proper coats and my mother’s face emerged regal as a queen’s out of an oversized pumpkin-orange coat, wearing her red sari, gold-threaded border in folds, daring fashion, daring my smile.

under palm trees a new grave – blackbirds carve silhouettes in September

Autumn Leaves, Lake George, 1924 by Georgia O’Keeffe, Image Source: georgiaokeeffe.net Thanks to Sunnyside where I first saw this.

My mother died eight years ago this month.

Continue reading “September’s Haibun” →

What Child Is This? (A Haibun)

On By dorahakIn Poems43 Comments

Aristotle wrote that women are incomplete men. I was raised on this with my mother’s milk. What is a girl when your firstborn could have been a boy. In my mother’s eyes, shame. In my father’s, disappointment, shame. Flawless would be a boy. Flawed would be me.

Christmas with a baby at the center just turned up the drollery of fate. Each year’s gift whispered, “Be a man. Someone notable. Do that for us and we will love you.” How unkind to have only a girl child to celebrate the birth of a King!

What child is this? Daddy asks. Mummy echoes, What child is this?

I ask, Dear God, What Child is this?

“What Child is this, who, laid to rest,
On Mary’s lap is sleeping?
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet,
While shepherds watch are keeping?”1

Now Christmas comes to a woman whose hair is thinning, whose hands and feet are deformed with disease, whose gait is slow, whose back is bent. Not under the weight of shame. She sees the One in the manger born and wonders that Love came down into the muck of a world where children cry themselves to sleep and no one hears or cares. Jesus, You came a long way. And so did I with You.

This, this One died lonely
tree-hung to save a girl child
from pitiless hands

Image by Hans Braxmeier from Pixabay

Philippians 2:5-11
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

1What Child Is This?

What child is this, who, laid to rest,
On Mary’s lap is sleeping,
Whom angels greet with anthems sweet
While shepherds watch are keeping?

(Refrain)This, this is Christ the King,
Whom shepherds guard and angels sing;
Haste, haste to bring Him laud,
The babe, the son of Mary!

Why lies He in such mean estate
Where ox and ass are feeding?
Good Christian, fear: for sinners here
The silent Word is pleading.

Nails, spear shall pierce him through,
The Cross be borne for me, for you;
Hail, hail the Word Made Flesh,
The babe, the son of Mary!

So bring Him incense, gold, and myrrh;
Come, peasant, king, to own Him!
The King of Kings salvation brings;
Let loving hearts enthrone Him!

Raise, raise the song on high!
The virgin sings her lullaby.
Joy! joy! for Christ is born,
The babe, the son of Mary!

William Chatterton Dix, “What Child Is This?” (1865)
“What Child is This” – Violinist: Lindsey Stirling
Donna's Go Dog Go Cafe’s Inaugural Haibun Wednesday
Eugi's Weekly Prompt: "notable"

Writer’s Block: A Brown Study in Haibun

On By dorahakIn Poems45 Comments

I want to start a poem like this: I am brown, very brown. Then I get writer’s block. Because now it’s out there.

There’s a story to tell, but it’s not poetic. It’s definitional. I have to define wheatish, fair, tan, light-skinned, black, white, and all the colors that separate you and me, and beat us into submission, into bearing the crimes of our color, even though not once have I cried because I was dark brown. But I have cried because you spoke to my skin color and not to me.

And tears are wordless, colorless. Their salt shorts out syllables, keyboards, laptops. Already I taste it on my tongue. So I eat the heart of a dragon and listen to the gossip of birds.

A blackbird flies south
Its shadow falls on Mt. Fuji
Western sun descends

Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) “Tea house at Koishikawa. The morning after a snowfall”
Frank at dVerse asks us to write on Writer's Block for Haibun Monday. 
The haibun form "consists of one to a few paragraphs of prose
—usually written in the present tense—that evoke an experience and are 
often non-fictional/autobiographical. They may be preceded or followed 
by one or more haiku—nature-based, using a seasonal image—that complement without directly repeating what the prose stated. 
Click on Mr. Linky to join in!