a kind of poetry - May 2014

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

haibun

The Shekinah

Mount Sinai has its history of the nameless appearing as fire within a bush; and then again, not as a mountain-shaking wind, nor an earthquake and not even a fire, but as a gentle breeze. On Mount Carmel the nameless fell as fire and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench. On another sacred mountain a shining cloud voiced the name of the nameless transfiguring the familiar before our eyes.

Here, on this day, within my eyes, the peaks of the Southern Alps fold up as joined fingers from the bowels of below. They become playgrounds of light in enfolding clouds, hiding and revealing sun and moon and stars. The folds of the mountains muscled in snow and shadow, the soundless depth of fiords, the sheen of cascading waters among alpine trees unfold continuous streams of change.

Countless are the poets who try to exhaust the nature of the scenes I behold yet fall prostrate in silence. Artists too find no further use for their tools and canvases after dashing off incomplete brush strokes in ink.

Shall I now, this day, strain to become at one with the ineffable, plummeting into the depths or soaring into the heavens? Must I too remain at peace with discontent as birds are with wings?

Night after night I strain against the stubborn rigidity of words and the finitude of my imagination as I seek to exhaust the ever-changingness of the day and the night within them.

through the mist

day after day bitten

to the core

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

winter's end
light pulls back
to the surface

THF Per Diem Archive
S. Pierides December 2014, Light & Dark

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

the tui's descant
irridescence teetering
at the edge of light

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

sea breeze —
the end of time
rustling

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

may day —
flowers re-occupy
their shadows

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

may day —
a geisha flowers
within her

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

night of stars!
the hairs on the nape
of my neck

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

amazing!
I awaken still me
after sleep

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

cancer ward —
nursery rhymes tick-tock
bitter clear

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

gibbet dawn . . .
the jangle of silver
dangles down

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

the echo
after ever after
autumn silence

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

stillborn lullaby
the stretch of the milky way
between our voices

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

autumn road . . .
the sound of emptiness
in my footfall

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

south-sea breeze
a colonial oak's
death rattle

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

not expecting
such fucking fruitfulness
this pulp of love

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

dead silence
the scattered remains
of a big bang

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

grey Buddha
a halo of hydrangeas
soften the stone

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

tanka

see how time
reshapes my silhouette
cast by moonlight . . .
far away a half moon
rises out of my past

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

fourth act . . .
my soliloquy
in the clouds

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

bird loud day
the after-echo
of nothing

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

tanka

mountain silence,
I will get to hear
the shifts of light . . .
I am well versed in the paths
of your valley mists

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

poet's park
only the rustling grasses
on this trail

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

tanka

the dew drop
hanging still from the leaf . . .
it would not be
had not my own eyes
been tinted by dawn

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

tanka

entering the mist
I become so at one
with mere being
that, with the forming of shapes
and words, it slips away

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

in autumn rain
the living too are strangers —
graveyard moss

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

all my reading quietly enkindles

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

fallow field
the folds of what
I plough under

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

star viewing
all that was
telescoped into the present
yet to be

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

in the fog
along the river
another voice

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

by moonlight
a candle unveiling
dreamscapes

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

morning sky
horizon to horizon
cold porridge

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

tanka

by autumn light
the flicker of child fingers
shadow dancing beads . . .
a mayfly upon the stream
your words ripple through silence

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

suburban dawn . . .
a treadmill quickens
with purpose

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

star gazing
the downward spiral
into her eyes

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

this light!
my chest expansion
of darkness

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

dark sky . . .
a godhead in me
rises

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

new moon . . .
the void in me
yields to it

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

early bird . . .
the whole universe twists
in a wormhole

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

black hole
not seen by
two

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

the ancients
so still the shadows
between stars

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

a stone
utterly white
bares its name

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

wordless now!
my child's fingers
flicking light

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

leaf light
trees seen only
as they are

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

storm front
light drumrolls
its absence

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

first frost
the blackbird too sings
of some other light

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

window frost
misshapen trees melt
before me

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

beyond here
a keening wind
and the stars

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

red shift —
this lip service
of words

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

eventide —
a sparrow alights
a still point

Details: Written by Hansha Teki; Category: May 2014

fantail song . . .
still the fetal echoes
of a fatal quest

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