All week we’ve been getting the rain we wanted so much the last few years. I know floods and snowstorms are plaguing much of the state, but here it’s just wet. I love watching the storms roll through the bay.
Clouds drive westward.
Waves pound shoreward.
It’s not raining underwater.
I seem to be in minimalist mode to start the year. This one, which came to me via Sean the Sharpener, resonates with all the California rain:
Leaves falling,
lie on one another—
the rain beats on the rain
(tr. from Japanese by R.H. Blyth)
Breaking with tradition, I’m posting a poem of mine to wrap up the year.
Torn wrapping paper
piled by the fireplace—
holiday’s over.
Hope your holidays were sweet, and the New Year engaging.
I thought we needed something light, today, so here’s a Haiku from Issa, via Robert Hass along with a photo of me and a Louise Bourgeois Spider:
Don’t worry spiders
I keep house
casually.
Kobayashi Issa
translated by Robert Hass
While there are many wonderful blackberry poems, I know only three poems about cherries, all from previous centuries–one by Thomas Campion, one by Robert Herrick, and this one, by D. H. Lawrence, that Larry mentioned as we were eating the exceptionally sweet cherries of this summer:
Under the long, dark boughs, like jewels red
In the hair of an Eastern girl
Shine strings of crimson cherries, as if had bled
Blood-drops beneath each curl.
Continue reading “Cherries”
The blog will be taking a short break here, with two winter haiku (or really just very short poems).
Winter Haiku
morning hidden in fog:
a gift wrapped
in cool white tissue
torn wrapping paper
piled by the fireplace
the holiday’s over