Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

February 18, 2014

Posted under

Holiday, Poetry

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36 Comments

Vacation Dreaming Haibun

Used with kind permission of Arthur Browne via Haibun Thinking

When I know a vacation is coming, I build castles in the sky of what amazing adventures are coming. Being a perfectionist, I imagine how it could be perfect, and work toward making it so, and worry about all the things that could go wrong.

My daughter was puking up her guts, going through copious bedding as the waves came, and then seemed to abate, and then returned, all through a very long night. The next day, Friday, was the last day of school before vacation week, and my older son tossed his cookies at school (yes, another vomiting euphemism).

Meanwhile, my laptop’s hard drive’s ever increasing crashing turned out to be its death throes. All weekend, I rotated the laundry and worked toward getting a new hard drive, integration of a new operating system and retrieval of all my work.

Still, I found time to continue dreaming of palm trees, blue skies, warm breezes and perfect, lazy vacation days. A snowstorm came through, dumping six inches. My kids were puking, the snow was falling, and my laptop was in the shop. And yes, I continued to aspire to the perfect vacation, especially while shoveling or driving to the apple store.

hope does not tire
dreams never leave
vacation, will come

Miraculously, vacation did arrive, a few days late. Saturday: endless snow, struggling with data retrieval, fighting off my own fever, preparing lots of invalid food. Sunday: on the phone with apple support for hours, successfully retrieved my data despite the backup partially failing, then ran a new backup for 12 hours. Monday: packing frantically, departing for the airport, long pacing at Newark Airport waiting for our connecting flight, getting in very late, exhausted kids and parents.

Here it is Tuesday, and we have lounged by the pool, seen lizards on palm trees, and drank champagne (ok, not the kids). We managed to get here in time for the best weather all week.

dreams blossom
green fronds unfold in sun
paradise found

Inspired by the Haibun Thinking prompt and the photograph above by Arthur Browne.

Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

February 18, 2014

Posted under

Poetry

Comments

26 Comments

Traveling Haiku

Newark layover
pacing, dreaming of palm trees
sun sets slowly

Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

February 16, 2014

Posted under

Poetry

Comments

46 Comments

Music in the Soul Haibun

Music in the soul can be heard by the universe.
— Lao Tzu

When my oldest was an active, playful 18 month old, he asked: “Can I play violin?” That was one of his first full sentences.

We did not have a violin or piano in our home. I wondered how he knew what a violin was. I asked around, and other moms told me that children as young as three study violin. No one else I spoke to had a child asking to play an instrument.

During that time, we moved and I had our second son. When my oldest was three, I met a woman in my yoga class who was beginning a new group of 3- and 4-year old violin students in the fall. I asked her if I should take seriously his request despite his young age, and she said yes, of course.

I remember sitting outside in the sunshine on my deck, when I told my three-year old son that I was going to take him to see a lesson if he still wanted to learn. He said: “Mom, I’m sorry I’ve been so mean to you lately.” I was silenced.

My eldest sat calmly on my lap for 45 minutes listening to a chaotic double lesson with two siblings just back from a summer music camp in Colorado. He said not a word and barely moved, which was not his normal behavior at all. Eventually the teacher turned to me, and she said: “I forgot you were here, he was so quiet. That’s a very long time for a child his age, you don’t need to stay to the end.”

My son climbed down, walked up to the teacher and said: “That was the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard.” He had never heard live violin music before.

intense green eyes
unwavering on the strings
hearing with his whole being

My husband I had never studied music. Nine years after deciding to honor my young son’s wishes, my oldest and youngest play violin, my second son plays cello and drums, and all three play piano. My husband and I have learned some violin and piano as adults. In our house, we have three violins, a cello, a digital piano, a Yamaha piano, a marimba, a saxophone, a trumpet, an acoustic guitar, a sanza, a variety of drums, a cymbal. We have all played music together in several concerts.

The kids now see music as part of our lives. They are talented singers, in chorus and musicals, in addition to playing in orchestras. All three of my children make up their own songs and improvise by preference. Music has become part of the fabric of our souls. Perhaps it always was.

steel strings ring
my soul expands with each note
vibrating

Inspired by the Weekly Ligo Haibun Challenge prompt, this one providing the quote at the top.

Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

February 16, 2014

Posted under

Humor, Poetry

Comments

25 Comments

Sunshine Spell

Roll back the clouds,
Bring me some sun.
Go away gray days,
It’s time for some fun!

Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

February 12, 2014

Posted under

Poetry

Comments

15 Comments

Winter Reverie Haiku

dancing light
penetrating the dark places
reverie on joy

Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

February 12, 2014

Posted under

Poetry

Comments

100 Comments

Goodbye Hope: a Monody Haībun

Last night in my email, was another writer’s bane, the let-you-down-gently words that sink in like thorns. I didn’t have high hopes, how can one in my place? I have time for writing, time for dreams, time for children-rearing, but no time for marketing.

Another so kind rejection in the mail.
How can I go on when to go on is to fail?
It’s nicely worded, not harsh at all,
And yet, it’s kind words hurt like an icy fall.
Why do I need for my words to be heard?
Why not chirp quietly on a branch like a bird?
Oh, hope, so fragile, so easily flown away,
Will you come back soon, stay for another day?

Why do any of us write? We have words inside us, needing to come out. It’s that simple. When my boys hit age three, they had to run. They ran and ran, circling me like dolphins around a boat, chirping and loving, laughing and falling. They ran because they had to, and I did not stop them. I tried to keep them safe.

Can I parent myself, the young writer? How would I do that? I know I need to write, and so I will. I will let myself write, and as I send my words into the world, I will try to keep myself safe.

Not everyone has to like what I wrote. I write for my own reasons, and I share magic and joy where I can. Even if only one person is touched, has a better day, feels the magic, then that’s enough. My work is enough. My words are enough. I will keep sending my words into the world.

As for my kind rejecter, I will smile, and I will remember that that person’s day is too long, too busy, too full to take on my words. That’s okay. She has a busy life, too, and only so many hours in it.

sycamore grows in summer
its roots leave words in the soil
the leaves read the shining sun

Note: A Monody is a lament, a dirge or an elegy for someone or something departed. A Haibun is prose, culminating in poetry, with its heart beating in the natural world. This was partly inspired by a series of recent rejections, by the weekly poetry prompt by painttheworldwithwords to write a monody and by the weekly Haībun Thinking prompt, with a freestyling example by Al.

References:
http://www.shadowpoetry.com/resources/wip/monody.html
http://painttheworldwithwords.wordpress.com/2014/02/11/poetic-form-of-the-week-monody/

Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

February 10, 2014

Posted under

Poetry

Comments

33 Comments

I Can Fly

Sunlights slants through the trees, blinding me.
Smoke rises from the chimney carrying an acrid scent.
Wind showers me with sparkling fairy dust from the trees
Making me blink, blink, but then I feel like I can fly.

Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

February 9, 2014

Posted under

Photography, Poetry

Comments

68 Comments

Old North Wind

Blow old North wind,
Your icy breath is a knife,
Storms have twinned,
Roads bisected by slushy ruts.

Sturdy New England folk
Might be down in the mouth;
Monotonous gray skies invoke
A temptation to head South.

Forty days to the solstice.
The sun is headed this way,
Eventual defeat to cold paralysis.
So we will wait it out, come what may.

Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

February 8, 2014

Posted under

Poetry

Comments

53 Comments

Warm Embrace Haiku

winter sunshine
hug reaches through the trees
embraced by the universe

Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

February 7, 2014

Posted under

Poetry

Comments

41 Comments

Visitor in the Temple Haībun

The February sunshine steeps your boughs
and tints the buds and swells the leaves within.
The groves were God’s first temples.
— William C. Bryant

Daily on my walks, I see miracles of beauty, hidden places that driving would never reveal. The slower I walk, with more deliberation and care, with time to look around, the more my soul lifts with the beauty casually offered to my eyes. Some combinations of shrub and tree were created with careful selection, pruning, fertilizing and skill beyond mine. I am the worshipper, visiting briefly in temples built by others.

Even my own garden has treasures I received, simply by deciding to dwell here. Some irises were planted by a previous owner. I thought they would be purple, and each year I waited for them to bloom. Their leaves never embraced a flower stem except once, overshadowed as they had become by the vigorous forsythia planted too close. One fall, I pruned back the forsythia. That next spring, the forsythia did not bloom, but the iris did: delicate and pale pink, with a creamy white interior.

not purple, unexpected
the pink of my son’s rosy cheeks
bearded iris bloomed

My neighbor, Terry, came down the driveway, waving, and calling to me. She told me she was delighted to see Reed’s irises in bloom after so many years. She asked for one, and I freely gave it. She told me about the woman who had planted them. Reed had developed brain cancer and was gone in a few months. The neighbors had come together to make the family meals while she enjoyed her last days, looking out on her garden. One neighbor came to play harp for her in the evenings. Now her garden is my garden, and her irises are in my care.

Last year, I moved all those irises away from the forsythia and into the sun. My neighbor, Terry, came by again: her iris had not survived. I told her I would give her another one day, once they had recovered from transplanting. One spring soon, I hope to see that pale pink flower again. I will care for them here, in my outdoor temple. As I tend the memories of my own mother.

mourning in shade
thick green bud rises in the sun
time to bloom again

Added by request, an old iris painting of mine, purple like the ones I carried at my wedding:

Iris 1 Painting by Brenda Davis Harsham

Inspired by the Līgo Haībun Challenge Prompt: Temple.

Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

February 7, 2014

Posted under

Humor, Photography, Poetry

Comments

45 Comments

Captured for the First Time!

Used with Kind Permission of Tracy at Wanderlust

Never before photographed in the wild!
The elusive, secretive Ice Snails —

Ice Snails clinging
Before the big race
Little hearts singing
Hoping for speed and grace.

Cloaking devices active —
Only frost fairies see snails —
Rainbow refractive.
Snails leave glistening trails.

One will finish first,
Blest by the Frost Queen,
Putting on speed in a burst,
Winning rights to preen.

Fairies celebrate with hot cider,
Made from Autumn’s windfalls,
Berry tart and mushroom slider —
Feasting and fun within Fairy halls.

No wild life were harming in the making of this post. 😉

Inspired by Tracy’s Ice photographs at Wanderlust. Check them out, they are awesome!

Posted by

Brenda Davis Harsham

Posted on

February 5, 2014

Posted under

Poetry

Comments

60 Comments

The Heart of a Garden Haibun

Used with permission of Sally – My Beautiful Things

I always leave part of my heart in my garden as the yellow leaves drift slowly down, followed by the snow. My summer heart hibernates there, with the bulbs and the frogs, below the frost line. I don’t have the heart to clear all the leaves away, it’s too like wiping the tears of the tree.

I prefer to leave them where they fall in the flower beds, fertilizer and insulation against the winter’s fury. On the grass, I rake them all into a big pile, and let the kids jump in. We toss up the leaves in fistfuls, and they fall in our hair. We make leaf angels, before we bag them all.

My summer heart is there still in my garden, slumbering, under the snow forts, the snowmen and beyond the snow angel farms. Wrapped closely with leaves, dreaming of sunshine and warm days.

first green shoots
split the soil apart
my heart leaps out

Inspired by the Tuesday Haibun Thinking: Week 3.