poetry

lens-artists photo challenge: winter

The Plum-blossom is the first of the “hundred flowers” to open. It symbolizes the beginnings of things, and is also one of the “three friends” who do not fear Winter’s cold, the other two being the pine and the bamboo.

cited: Fir-Flower Tablets Poems Translated from the Chinese Trans: Florence Ayscough & Amy Lowell Project Gutenberg

A Winter night, a cold Winter night. To me, the night is unending.

I chant heavily to myself a long time. I sit, sit in the North Hall.

The water in the well is solid with ice. The moon enters the Women’s Apartments.

The flame of the gold lamp is very small, the oil is frozen. It shines on the misery of my weeping. ~Li t’ai-Poa Woman Sings to the Air: “Sitting at Night Fir-Flower”

excerpt: Trans: Florence Ayscough & Amy Lowell Fir-Flower Tablets Poems Translated from the Chinese Project Gutenberg

First snow! I see it young every winter, 
Yet my face grows old 
As Winter comes. ~ The Diary of Izumi Shikibu

cited: Trans: Annie Shepley Omori & Kochi Doi Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan

This week’s lens-artists photo challenge – winter – is sponsored by Leya

lens-artists photo challenge: autumn

The grass does not refuse

To flourish in the spring wind;

The leaves are not angry

At falling through the autumn sky.

Who with whip or spur

Can urge the feet of Time?

The things of the world flourish and decay,

Each at its own hour.

cited: The Poet Li Po (AD 701- 762) Trans: A Waley, Project Gutenberg

Autumn 2017
Autumn 2017

Autumn 2018

This week’s lens-artists photo challenge is sponsored by Patti.

lens-artists photo challenge: spring

In the courtyard there grows a strange tree,

Its green leaves ooze with a fragrant moisture.

spring 2020

Holding the branch I cut a flower from the tree,

Meaning to send it away to the person I love.

spring, 2019

Its sweet smell fills my sleeves and lap.

The road is long, how shall I get it there?

spring 2018

Such a thing is not fine enough to send:

But it may remind him of the time that has past since he left

spring 2017

cited: Trans: Arthur Waley. A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems, Project Gutenberg

spring!

Note: The poem above is one of a series known as the Nineteen Pieces of Old Poetry. Some have been attributed to Mei Shēng (first century b.c.), and one to Fu I (first century a.d.).

This week’s lens-artists challenge (spring) is hosted by Tina

billowing clouds

stillness–
in the depths of the lake
billowing clouds ~Issa (cited: haikuguy.com)

Nikon D750 f/8 1/500s 170mm 400 ISO edited: Capture One

In response to this haiku, David (haikuguy.com) writes:

” Even though Issa is known for his comic haiku that have surprising, spiritual resonance; he is just as capable of revealing the sublime. French translator Jean Cholley translates the first word, shizukasa, as “sérénité” (“serenity”); En village de miséreux: Choix de poèmes de Kobayashi Issa (Paris: Gallimard, 1996) 33. Indeed, shizukasa denotes tranquility, quiet, calm. Of English possibilities, I’ve decided to use “stillness”–but the reader should be aware that Issa establishes a sense of deep peace before showing billowing mountains of clouds reflected “in the depths of the lake.” The haiku serves as a substitute for experience–or, perhaps, a clear window into experience–allowing the reader, in contemplation, to see that same lake, those same clouds, and to feel the serenity and stillness of the moment.” 

returning to silence…

quite a feat–
in utter silence
the plum tree blooms ~Issa (cited: haikuguy.com)

Returning to silence begins with an awareness of our in-breath and our out-breath. The uniting of body and mind opens a door to noble silence. We become available to life and life becomes available to us with just three seconds of mindfulness of the breath…releasing the past and the future.

Nikon D750 f/5.6 1/100s 300mm 400 ISO/neutral density filter edited: Capture One 20

Around my home are the river rock I’ve picked up during nature walks so I’ve especially enjoyed the video, “Matter and Memory” by Katayama Yoshiyuki. As an introduction to this video, she noted:

“I like so-called ordinary stones, and I often bring them home as a souvenir if there are stones that I like when I go somewhere far away.

Ordinary stones are generally worthless, but I sometimes feel that they are more valuable to me than expensive goods that are mass production.

Stones are like containers with nothing inside. That is why I feel I can pack a lot of memories or scenery of the land into the stones and bring them home.

“‘That which I could never find without going to that place’
It is probably an important factor, I think.”

contemplating a sunset with… the sarashina diary

80th day…

Excerpt from The Sarashina Diary, “Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan“

“There is a mountain called Ashigara [Hakoné] which extends for ten and more miles and is covered with thick woods even to its base. We could have only an occasional glimpse of the sky. We lodged in a hut at the foot of the mountain. It was a dark moonless night. I felt myself swallowed up and lost in the darkness, when three singers came from somewhere. One was about fifty years old, the second twenty, and the third about fourteen or fifteen. We set them down in front of our lodging and a karakasa [large paper umbrella] was spread for them. My servant lighted a fire so that we saw them. They said that they were the descendants of a famous singer called Kobata. They had very long hair which hung over their foreheads; their faces were white and clean, and they seemed rather like maids serving in noblemen’s families. They had clear, sweet voices, and their beautiful singing seemed to reach the heavens. All were charmed, and taking great interest made them come nearer. Some one said, ‘The singers of the Western Provinces are inferior to them,’ and at this the singers closed their song with the words, ‘if we are compared with those of Naniwa’ [Osaka]. * They were pretty and neatly dressed, with voices of rare beauty, and they were wandering away into this fearful mountain. Even tears came to those eyes which followed them as far as they could be seen; and my childish heart was unwilling to leave this rude shelter frequented by these singers.

“Next morning we crossed over the mountain.** Words cannot express my fear*** in the midst of it. Clouds rolled beneath our feet. Halfway over there was an open space with a few trees. Here we saw a few leaves of aoi**** [Asarum caulescens ]. People praised it and thought strange that in this mountain, so far from the human world, was growing such a sacred plant. We met with three rivers in the mountain and crossed them with difficulty. That day we stopped at Sekiyama. Now we are in Suruga Province. We passed a place called Iwatsubo [rock-urn] by the barrier of Yokobashiri. There was an indescribably large square rock through a hole in which very cold water came rushing out.”

“Mount Fuji is in this Province. …”

skyscape photograph created with Nikon D750 f/8 1/500s 200mm 400 ISO and edited in Capture One 20 and Photoshop

Footnotes:

*This seems to be the last line of a kind of song called Imayo, perhaps improvised by the singers; its meaning may be as follows: “You compare us with singers of the Western Provinces; we are inferior to those in the Royal City; we may justly be compared with those in Osaka.”

**Hakoné Mountain has now become a resort of tourists and a place of summer residence.

***Fear of evil spirits which probably lived in the wild, and of robbers who certainly did.

**** Aoi, or Futaba-aoi. At the great festival of the Kamo shrine in Kioto the processionists crowned their heads with the leaves of this plant, so it must have been well known.