poetry

the waiting room

April’s calendar … April, a month of increasing memorial days eclipsing birthdays.

When from the neighbouring garden the perfume-laden air
Saturates my soul with memories,
Rises the thought of the beloved plum-tree
Blooming under the eaves of the house which is gone. ~ The Sarashina Diary

April is my mother’s birthday as well as her memorial month. April … a month of revisiting moments … reacquainting with an amazing woman … a person.

When we were together, within our mother-daughter roles, were we strangers hidden behind our labels?

April is my great-granddaughter’s birthday. A month of celebration … of joy …. of cuddly soft buddies … of new beginnings

*cited: Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan, digital.library.upen.edu

Fujifilm X-T4: f/11 1/6 s 80 mm 400 ISO

Fujifilm X-T4: f/8 1/25 s 80 mm 400 ISO

the waiting room

It is not that

I avoid mixing

with the world;

but I do better

Playing alone. ~Ryoken (Trans: K Tanahashi, Sky Above, Great Wind)

The memory of that moment … the question … the room suddenly dark … a cloud bank covering the sun …

“Why do you ask questions when you know I will lie?”

Were my questions searching for grain of truth that would return my bliss of ignorance?” Yet, how can that be? As I in those moments was like Humpty Dumpty who will never ever be put back together again?

The question, “why ask when you know I will lie” was a darker betrayal to layers of betrayals.

Yet, today I ask, many years later, “Why do others … reporters, bankers, leaders, public officials, the betrayed ask questions when they know the response will be a lie?”

Why do they listen to the lies … film the lies … and then, over and over again share the lies obsessively to justify, rationalize, deny, or sardonically illustrate the untruths?

Yet, a greater question that is increasingly significant to me, “Why am I siting here listening to this public cycle of questions, lies, and rationalizations?”

Could it be that there is an American trauma of loss created by lies that repeatedly search for healing through the media?

Am I driven to search for truths motivated with an unspoken hope that has the power of a mustard seed to build mountains that see beyond the lies and distractions to a democracy is not broken … forever and ever? Or is democracy also like Humpty Dumpty … never ever put back together again?

Yet, to be honest, I must admit … blushingly … I did enjoy the snarky in Jimmy Kimmel Live, Trump Attacks the Pope, Thinks He’s Jesus & Bashes Springsteen in HIs Most Bananas Posing Spree Yet.

I fear any respect for the Presidency of the United States will never ever be put back together again as it is cracked beyond cracked.

the waiting room

Were there someone

in the world

who feels as I feel,

we would talk all night

in this grass hut. ~Ryokan (Trans: K Tanahashi, Sky Above, Great Wind)

As I watch the eastern horizon’s transition from the black of night to first light’s opaque colors and then to sunrise’s pastels, I find myself asking,” “What is it that you are waiting for? Or, are you, unknowingly, waiting for someone?”

The morning news filters into my consciousness, blinding me to what is now, and another cycle of searching and editing of words … sentences … meaning begins an undeclared battle with internalized others; fragmented, abstract, vague, absent others.

shadows of squares -9

wabi-sabi … the beauty within the transition of summer’s fading light to autumn’s slumbering shadows

“We crossed it in a boat, and it is the Province of Sagami. The mountain range called Nishitomi is like folding screens with good pictures. On the left hand we saw a very beautiful beach with long-drawn curves of white waves. There was a place there called Moro-koshi-ga-Hara (Chinese Field) where sands are wonderfully white. Two or three days we journeyed along that shore. A man said: ‘In Summer pale and deep Japanese pinks bloom there and make the field like brocade. As it is Autumn now we cannot see them.’ But I saw some pinks scattered about blooming pitiably. They said: ‘It is funny that Japanese pinks are blooming in the Chinese field.'” *

*Trans: AS Omori and K Doi. The Sarashina Diary, AD 1009-1059 Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan

Visit The Life of B to join November’s Shadows of Squares

lens-artist: ephemeral

She with a cup of coffee, embraced within her chilled palms, both blanketed by the first light’s silence … her eyes looking, not seeing the eastern horizon’s slow transition from darkness to light. Suddenly, the sky’s canvas painted by the dance of the sun’s rays and clouds broke through her internal musings, “Wait, wait, please don’t move,” she pleaded as she began a search for her camera and trying so desperately, once again, to win her battle with … the moment by moment changes within life, the ephemeral nature of all that is…

across a concealed blue sky

aimless shifting stories...

gathering and dispersing – obscure particles

painting stories … anew,

moment by moment

Thank you Tina for the week’s lens-artist challenge: Ephemeral