here there where
day in the park
a cat eats weed flowers. my dog sits on the bird bath. a mom spreads a picnic blanket for baby’s feeding bottles. three crows swoop in on my bag of popcorn. a weed flower sticks to my dress.
the baby drools. on her blue bib. the sky turns golden.
i gather my crumbs under the blooming junipers. i pull up a heather. a squirrel flies over my head on a twig.
chippers chatter.
my heather turns blue. the baby picks a dandelion. the sun slides down. over skies a swarm of snowbirds fly home. i have no wings.
silence
silence is not the absence of sound. a sheer wall in the mind perhaps. a blockade for the heart. one cannot hear a heartbeat. the whooshing of blood in and out of ventricles. blubbering air in the lungs. a grumbling emptiness in guts. random complaints from muscles trapped in passions.
silence as gaping space traps what fills air waves. winds that fissures slurp. secrets blossoms share. coughing of uncouth machines. grating wheels those dumpsters edging out magpies. the cawing of crows to be understood. marble chirps colliding with fresh acorns among the pines. sonatas on toes around the rim of dreams.
births are seeded in silence. in secret. the first cry is a child of silence. wakefulness its gender.
new calendar
first day of the year. just another grey day. a pall on the new calendar. as if what makes a difference really doesn’t.
the ticking clock. a distant squawking of a crow or better yet, complaint. deep sigh of engines passing by. the trudge goes on.
i look on the cypress with a creeping sense of sorrow. the deep cold dark in its twigs. holiday gifts piled beside it now debris.
a black garbage bag rests folded in the bin.
i gather the cards. wishes slide off my fingers. a bag of pebbles waits to be planted in the vase. like wishes that might take root, i would have to water them each day.
blue notes waver in the light. as if there’s something i should know.
death still
death still on the shore. no breath lapping sand. the bay water clear as eyes. a selvage edge of secrets. a quiet suspiration under a translucent film of air. a shimmer that wavers underneath over shell shards.
emptied mollusks. spawning stones. furry algae. fibrous weeds.
dead still but not sealed. only walled in. like your eyes, when you stare within. an absent look. a vacant thought. like i’m not there.
Alegria Imperial (jornales) won a Commended Award, traditional category, in The Haiku Foundation 2012 Haiku Now Contest, and has published haiku, tanka, haibun and haiga in eucalypt, GUSTS, LYNX online, The Heron’s Nest, Notes from the Gean and Sketchbook. One of her haiku was included in The Haiku Foundation’s daily feature “Per Diem” while two of her free verses can be read in Magnapoets 2011 anthologies 1 and 2.
qarrtsiluni 