poetry

weekly photo challenge: express yourself

Were there someone

in the world

who feels as I feel,

we would talk all night

in this grass hut.

                              ~Ryokan*

weeklyphotochallengeexpressyourself

visit The Daily Post to participate in Krista’s photo challenge:  express yourself

*cited:

Sky Above, Great Wind

Kazuaki Tanahashi

the enemy in the world today…

It’s Not The Same

The demonstrators who…filled the streets…

the suicide core of the…who attacked…

And the students who charged against the riot staves of police…

They weren’t the same people.

…

what happened to all those people after that?

Nothing is ever quite the same

each time is different from every other

the heart of each person is disconnected.

But if there is one thing

that is the same,

it is that neither the newspapers nor television

ever reported on those young men after that.

And

the enemy in the world today

is not the United States,

is not the Soviet Union

but, bridged between you and me

unidentifiable

words of silence.

                                   ~Fukunaka Tomoko*

its not the same

 

*cited:

The Burning Heart

K Rexroth & I Atsumi

at times I hear…

One thousand peaks merge with frozen clouds;

ten thousand paths have no human trace.

Day by day just facing the wall,

at times I hear snow drift over the window.

                                                                          ~Ryokan*

kofford_b_handsacrosskeyboard 2

*cited:

Sky Above, Great Wind

Kazuaki Tanahashi

weekly photo challenge: shadowed

We meet and we part.

Coming and going–hearts like passing clouds.

Except for the marks of a frosty-hair brush,

human traces are hard to find.

                                                                 ~Ryokan*

DSC_1612Weeklyphotochallengeshadow2

visit The Daily Post to view or participate in Jen’s photo challenge: shadowed

*cited:

Sky Above, Great Wind

Kazuaki Tanahashi

every face passes by…

cicadas at nightfall–

every face passes by

without speaking a word

                                                             ~Ishibashi Hideno*

faces passing by

faces passing by

*cited:

Far Beyond the Field

Makoto Ueda

at last free…

At last free,

at last I am a woman free!

No more tied to the kitchen,

stained amid the stained pots,

no more bound to the husband

who thought me less

than the shade he wove with his hands.

No more anger, no more hunger,

I sit now in the shade of my own tree.

Meditating thus, I am happy, I am serene.

                                                                            ~Sumangalamata*

oldtownshadows 1

*”Sumangala’s Mother,” the wife of a maker of hats and shade-umbrellas, was a member of the earliest community of women followers of the Buddha.

cited:

Women in Praise of the Sacred

Ed: Jane Hirshfield