weekly photo challenge: twist

For cicada

the branches of a single tree

are a forest grove.

                            ~Socho*

weeklyphotochallengetwist (2)

To view additional images submitted for this week’s photo challenge or to share an image that says “twist” to you visit: The  Daily Post @Wordpress.com

*cited:

Haiku before Haiku

Steven Carter

weekly photo challenge: letters

weeklyphotochallengeletters

A writing stand,


paper, the moon…


riches

Sue

Riches — in Sue’s mind because set up to write poems. —

Aha, but will you catch the fishes (words) or not? — says Chiyo.

This imagery of fishes standing for words, especially fishes (words) that will not be caught (found) occurs in Buddhist literature and in Chinese poetry*

———

Visit The Daily Post to view additional images submitted for this week’s photo challenge:  letters.

*cited:
http://www.ahapoetry.com/twamth1.htm

With Liquid Voice Unendingly 
by Kago-no Chiyo-ni and Sue Jo.
Translated by Lenore Mayhew and William McNaughton in Modern Haiku, XIV:2, 1983.

weekly photo challenge: threshold

threshold

Standing at the Threshold

With uncertainty, I question

What is it that I seek?

Who is it that I beckon?

A father? A mother? A sister? A brother? A companion? A child? A god?

An intentional presence that is drawn upon

A place and time of shadows, myths, and dreams?

Birthed within a family?

Matured within a relationship?

Nourished within a community?

Where the Stillness within Silence,

Affirms the exchange of life’s giving and taking,

Embraces the connection of life’s emotional threads, and

Observes the interdependence of life with non-judgmental awareness,

Yet, knows of a united oneness with another that can not be?

Since it can not be, do I yearn

To know integration through the formation of thought;

To see clarity through the flowing of ink; and

To feel completion through the act of creating?

And then, finally, within the stillness of silence,

I befriend

An internal companion with whom

There is an honoring of the who and what of which I am;

A woman, a daughter, a sister, a niece, a wife, a mother, an aunt, a grandmother.

I touch

With reverence the presence of all that was, is, and will be.

I release

The seeking, the beckoning, the yearning to the Winds of Change.

I with uncertainty, Step over the Threshold

Foreseeing the return.*

*source

A Meditative Journey  with Saldage

B Catherine Koeford

 

cee’s fun foto challenge: texture

young sparrows, get out of the way!

get out of the way! 

a great horse is coming by! ~Issa*

come play with me!

You, little sparrow

motherless sparrow! ~Issa*

texture1

*cited in:

The Classic Tradition of Haiku

Ed:  Faubion Bowers

toddler shoe laces

thrift store1sign

toddler shoes in an antique store

Touching the present moment, we come to know the past created the present and together the future is being created. ~ Unknown

thrift store 2sign

shoe lace I

Just as you unreel the thread from a spool,

I want the past to become present.

thrift store 3sign

shoe lace II

The wife of Yoshitsune, a famous warrior in medieval Japan, wrote this farewell poem shortly after her spouse was deployed to the northern provinces where he later died.  She offers to us our creative ability to mentally bring the past alive and into the present.

thrift store 4sign

shoe lace III

… “Time goes from present to past.”  This is not true in our logical mind, but it is in the actual experience of making past time present.  There we have poetry, and there we have human life.

~ cited in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki

thrift store 5sign

shoe lace IV