asian poetry

lens-artists challenge: looking back – autumn

It stirs the soul

of even

the most

indifferent person –

first autumn winds ~Saigyo

Journeys with Johnbo takes us back to Patty’s June 2020 lens-artists photo challenge in which she invited artists “… join us … and share your images of this season. What does autumn look like in your part of the world? What does this season mean to you personally?”

Images of autumn, 2020

how I envy maple leafage

which turns beautiful

then falls ~Kagami Shikoo

What is it about autumn that is personal … the joy of a new school year, crunchy sounds of leaves, sights of leaves swirling with autumn winds, memories of burning leaves and jumping into piles of leaves, scents of autumn, promises of snow, desires to fly with geese, and feeling autumn’s unique dryness.

seeking spring’s arrival

Sending on ahead
My contemplated image of the form
Of remembered cherry flowers,
How many ranges have I vainly crossed
Taking for blossoms white clouds upon the peaks? ~Shunzei, Chūshū Eisô*

*Edited by: Miner, Introduction to Japanese Court Poetry, 110

lens-artists: alone time

A freshly-opened cherry bud … her lips upon the flute. She leans in the corner of the balcony: the night is chill, her silken robes are thin, her fingers cold . . . but music floats through the frosty woods and startled plums fall pattering down. ~Chang Hsien (Ed. various. The Jade Flute, The Project Gutenberg eBook)

The general sense impressions I have of “alone times” are moments of grief and loss as well as feelings similar to forlorn, isolated, lonely.

if there’s a house
standing alone, sure enough…
plum blossoms ~Issa (www.haikuguy.com)

I have often pondered a different sense of “alone” after learning of it’s origins; Middle English, “all one.”

“All one” speaks to me of a time of solitary; a sense of completion, wholeness, self-direction, and freedom.