Newark layover
pacing, dreaming of palm trees
sun sets slowly
Copyright 2014 Brenda Davis Harsham
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
Copyright 2014 Brenda Davis Harsham
Inspired by the Weekly Ligo Haibun Challenge prompt, this one providing the quote at the top.
Sunshine Spell
Roll back the clouds,
Bring me some sun.
Go away gray days,
It’s time for some fun!
Copyright 2014 Brenda Davis Harsham
Happy Valentine’s Day!!
There is no key to happiness.
The door is always open.
— Mother Teresa
Love comes to the door,
Peeking through the keyhole
Slipping through the letterbox,
Making its demands,
Leaving footprints on your clean floor.
Life is never the same.
Happiness follows with friends:
Laughter, feelings of flying,
Stomach turns somersaults,
Spinning in dizzy, dancing circles.
Then those friends grow up with you,
Happiness turning into contentment,
Laughter growing into smiles.
Spinning somersaults drift into a slow waltz.
Love settles into sharing and commiserations galore.
First our hearts are on our sleeves,
And then they are on our door.
In secret, they flutter still, quietly.
The sound of a roughened voice,
The slide of stubble against a smooth cheek.
Copyright 2014 Brenda Davis Harsham
Happy Valentine’s Day !!
To all those who love and are loved, whatever makes your heart flutter,
It’s a day to pause and be grateful for those tiny wings. 🙂
Warmly, Brenda
If She Can, So Can You!
Thanks to my new friend, Amy, who wrote this beautiful poem for me. I am proud to be someone who beats the odds. 🙂 I hope you have a magical day. My laptop is crash-crash-crashing, but I am hoping to sort it out today. Might be off-line doing that. Warmly, Brenda
Below is for a new friend, Brenda.
Friendly Fairy Tales … http://friendlyfairytales.com
(And all of my other friends who are struggling right now!)
________________________________________________
Look how this Rose
struggled just to exist.
She may not be perfect
nor pretty to some.
But yet She survived!
If She had folded
to disappointment,
She would not have
beaten those odds!
If She can, so can you.
Don’t quit. Keep going!
Just do your best
as this Rose did
and that is all
anyone …
including YOU …
can ask!
~The Rose~
Photography/Writing ©Amy Rose
Winter Reverie Haiku
dancing light
penetrating the dark places
reverie on joy
Copyright 2014 Brenda Davis Harsham
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/
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.
Copyright 2014 Brenda Davis Harsham
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.
Copyright 2014 Brenda Davis Harsham
Warm Embrace Haiku
winter sunshine
hug reaches through the trees
embraced by the universe
Copyright 2014 Brenda Davis Harsham
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
Copyright 2014 Brenda Davis Harsham
Inspired by the Līgo Haībun Challenge Prompt: Temple.
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. 😉
Copyright 2014 Brenda Davis Harsham
Inspired by Tracy’s Ice photographs at Wanderlust. Check them out, they are awesome!
Friendly Fairy Tales 