Carpe Diem Time Glass # 24

HAIGA

"I love to challenge you to write/compose an all new haiku (or tanka) in response on that haiga ... and if you think you can make a haiga yourself within 24 hours than you may also submit a haiga."

Granddaughter Samantha a few years ago

this little girl

under her blue umbrella

has no need for rain

~::~

Carpe Diem's "Remember This Music?" #1

Nate gets a hit, June, 2014

In August 2002, my daugher Karen had her first baby, My grandson Nathaniel.  We call him Nate.  While Karen was pregnant, an ultrasound revealed that Nate had transposition of the great arteries - his pulmonary artery and aorta were hooked up in reverse.  So instead of having a complete circulatory system, he had two closed loops.  Life expectancy with this condition is only a few hours.  But it is correctable, so Nate was born at Mott's Children's Hospital at the university of Michigan.  The neo-natal cardiac staff was on high alert, and as soon as he was born performed a radical procedure - opening a hole in the wall between the ventricles to allow mixing of the two blood streams - that stabilized him temporarily.

When he was a week old, he had open heart surgery to reverse the misplaced piping.  Everything went well.  He is now a smart, healthy 12-year old.

When he was very little, I wrote this song for him, and arranged it for big band.  Since he was tiny and turned blue, it's a minor blues.  The melody has two motifs.  Each is played, then repeated upside down - the reversal.  In the middle, the melody is taken apart and passed around the band - that is the surgery.  Then the recovery, and we take it on home.  The bass riff at the beginning and ending represent a heart beat.

That's me on the trombone solo.

This is too emotionally intense for me to write a good renga, but here it is anyway.

a child is born

not built according to plan

little boy blue

in the first hours of life

they must pierce his tiny heart

oxygen revived

he lives to see the dawn

waiting surgery

at one week pipes reversed

all is well now go and live

Carpe Diem's "Remember This Music?" #1

Typical [Six Word] Saturday

Off 

To Toledo

For Mom Maintenence

Carpe Diem's Kamishibai #10, "departing summer"

Plus - as an afterthought, and at no extra charge - Open Link Monday from The Imaginary Garden, where Magaly shares a slice of her life, so now I will share a quite different slice of mine.

Back to regularly scheduled programing.

Kamishibai is storyteller in Japanese.

For today's theme we each tell our story as a haibun - a two part written form consisting of a prose section and an accompanying haiku.
The rules:
1. A maximum of 100 words;
2. the haiku has to follow a few of the the classical rules:
       a. 5-7-5 syllables;
       b. season word;
       c. cutting word (interpunction);
       d. interchangeable first and third line
 

~~::~~

For two days every week this summer we have had my daughter's two kids, and usually one or more of their cousins with us.  This is the last week, and today is the next to last day. The cousins have enjoyed being together, and having them around has made these days more fun for us as well.

But now school will be starting soon, and everyone will be back in a different routine.  This reminds me of my own childhood, and how the whine of cicadas announced that summer was ending and soon we would be back in school.  [99 words]

Cousin Samantha, Nate and Emily

cousins' last play day
bittersweet experience (-)
whine of cicadas

~~::~~

Carpe Diem's Kamishibai #10, "departing summer"

Carpe Diem #317, Ivory (provided by Bjorn Rudberg)

 Seven of our Eleven Grandchildren

 IVORY

in our family

we are melanin challenged -

ivory skin tone

Carpe Diem #317

Carpe Diem #306, Chooyoo (Chrysanthemum Festival)

Mum's the word

I used this picture of the chrysanthemums at my doorstep just a few days ago.  It's from Nov. 1, last year.   I just took a look at the plant a few minutes ago.  There are three or four blossoms open now, and dozens of buds that are not yet ready to pop.

I'm quite taken with the idea of chrysanthemums and a long life.

chrysanthemum dew
sipping the fountain of youth
for life eternal

My wife's mother died earlier this year.  Both of her parents are buried next to her aunt and uncle.  Their son, her cousin, died of cancer a couple of months ago.  He was a great guy, a wonderful father to his kids, and a loving nephew for my mother-in-law.  He is buried just a few feet away.  My wife placed pots of white chrysanthemums at their graves.  So this haiku is tinged with sadness.

white chrysanthemums

placed at her cousin's grave side

too late for long life

~~::~~ 

[with a nod to Wabi]

 moon reflection
white chrysanthemum bouquet
lunar perfume scent

~~::~~

let's drink together

for a long and happy life

chrysanthemum tea

~~::~~

Carpe Diem #306 

 

Carpe Diem #291, O-Bon Festival (Bon Festival)

Image Source

~ 1 ~

the path i walk

a trail blazed by many

over centuries

~ 2 ~

my lost ancestors
lived hard lives of poverty
may their spirits rest

~ 3 ~

not just japanese ~
my wife places flowers
on her family's graves

~~::~~

Carpe Diem #291

Carpe Diem Special #52, Kikaku's "a white crane from Fukei"

 Usually I jump right into Carpe Diem prompts, but I had to let this one ferment for a few hours.

Inspirtional Haiku by Kikaku

How I wish to call

A white crane from Fukei,

But for this cold rain

My inspiration

i should take a walk

by the pond with my mother

to see the white cranes

Mom is 92.  You can see her here

Carpe Diem Special #52,

Carpe Diem Kamishibai #4

An Autobiographical Haibun

At the end of my junior year in high school I met a girl, but didn't get to know her.  She was only a freshman.  After Summer passed and the new school year started, we met again and this time I did get to know her.  We fell in love. [Note the out-of-control spin that expression implies.  Nobody ever climbs into love]  It was sweet. We dated for two years, in a very chaste, early 60's all-too-Catholic way [this was before the sexual revolution] then drifted apart.

No.  That's not quite right.  It all came unraveled.  We were young. There were distractions.  Love isn't always easy.   We moved on, married other people, had families.  I thought we had forgotten about each other.  Eventually, though, we found ourselves living a few blocks apart on the same street.  Fate had brought us not exactly together again, but at least into the same space.  By this time, my marriage was pretty much a disaster.  In fact, it had become quite ugly.  I wound up divorced.

A year later, so did she.  Then we were able to get together again.  I discovered something that I had hidden from myself for many years - I never stopped loving her.  The great amazing surprise was that she loved me.

We've been together ever since - I and the one great love of my life, now growing old together.  I have a son and a daughter.  She has two sons.  Together we share 11 smart, beautiful, talented grandchildren.

Getting here wasn't easy. But now I can truly say that life is good.

Bumpa's 11

fate or destiny

who knows - but what a great gift

is a second chance

~:~

Carpe Diem Kamishibai #4

Carpe Diem #261, Dervish Dream

Today, I'm thinking not so much about the music of Karunesh, but more about a whirling dancer, and what her dreams might be.

The dervish specifically seeks a heightened spiritual awakening.  But even a secular dancer [or musician, poet, artist or artisan] can strive for an experience outside the ordinary that might, from the application of serious discipline, have a spiritual component.

Our oldest granddaughter, who will be sixteen next month, is a serious dancer.  In addition to her regular dance studies, she has participated in several summer intensives with the Cicchetti Council of America, The American Ballet Theater, and she is currently in New York spending a week with The Rockettes.

Here is a video where you can see some of her twirling, specifically at 0:55 and 1:50. 

Who knows where she will go, if she follows her dream.

~ 1 ~

serious dance
body and spirit moving
in cosmic rhythm

~ 2 ~

the earth always whirls
moose grows antlers at each turn
goose flies home again

~ 3 ~

silken dervish
orb weaver does the 8 step
whirling a web

~(-)~

Carpe Diem #261

Family Life

And, after the fact, a Carpe Diem Freestyle opportunity.  We have Nate and Em two days a week this Summer.  It can be a lot of work, but these moments are fleeting, and not to be missed.

Granddaughter Emily

playing othello

the seven-year-old says

use your noggin

and a Pi-ku

granddaughter
she's
cheeky and smart

~~::~~

Carpe Diem Freestyle #2