bound homeward under
clear summer skies:
bird feathers, flowers.~Keido*
monochrome blossoms … Cee’s fotd
*cited: Yoel Hoffmann, Japanese Death Poems
summer flowers
poetry
cmmc – close up
At night in my sleep
embraces the summer shadows
of my life. ~Oto*
Cee’s August’s cmmc: close up or macro
*cited: Y Hoffmann, Japanese Death Poems
thursday morning with Sho-u
the first dream of the year —
I kept it a secret
and smiled to myself ~Sho-u
a visitor
The whole world is you,
yet you keep thinking
there is something else.~Hsueh Feng
friday with hakuni
To a melody of prayer
disappears the moon–
my place of rest. ~Hakuni*
*cited: Y Hoffmann, Japanese Death Poems
One of a series of poppy images Cee’s fotd
b&w landscape
one tree
one farmer’s field…
evening cool ~Issa*
*cited: haikuguy.com
poppy buds
I’ve been wandering for so long …
May I rest for a bit?
I am old and I am bored. I was never very wise and my mind has never walked much further than my feet. Only my forest. My forest … I go back and back to wander there. ~Wang-Wei*
*cited: The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Jade Flute, by Various
spring mist iv
A broken dream–
where do they go
the butterflies? ~Ichimu*
*cited: Y Hoffmann, Japanese Death Poems
rain drops
Hidden among the roots
of grass I hear
a cuckoo ~ Otsuin*
Today my memory invites me to that time…the time my grandparents invited me to go with them to visit family. Sitting in Great Aunt Ida’s living room with her siblings and their spouses listening to shared stories of unknown family and friends, a adolescent’s sudden insight, “that is what being old is….sharing stores of those who died in one’s yesterdays.”
Today as a great grandmother, I find myself wandering through recalled memories with yearnings to visit past times colored by gratitude and secret desires to resolve moments of disconnect.
Seeking moments of my mom and dad, sisters and brothers, friends, extended family, and teachers and imagining us all sitting together around a table of trust, the trust that evaporates caution, sharing yesterday’s stories of being.
*cited in Y Hoffmann, Japanese Death Poems
weekend sky, 105
The temple bell roused me from dreams
And waiting for the starlit dawn
The night, alas! was long as are
One hundred autumn nights.~The Sarashina Diary*
*cited: Translated: Annie Shipley Omoni & Kōchi Doe. Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1920.
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