December 2011 Christmas and New Year Challenge
Any Japanese genre poetry on seasonal themes: Christmas, New Year, holidays.
April Challenge
In Australia in April we are deepening into autumn. In Adelaide it is still warm weather. The quinces are ripening on the trees, the shops full of the harvest of summer fruits. Autumn foliage is beginning to appear on the exotic European trees we have planted along our streets. Shops are filling with warm clothes for winter. The car race and the Fringe and Adelaide Festivals have finished bringing to an end the rush of Mad March. The blocked traffic is now flowing freely once more, interstate and international visitors have flown away. In Japan the cherry blossom season should have reached Kyoto. Challenge: customs of autumn or flowers of spring. Senryu, haiku, tanka. Please use your imagination.
The Stocking
ReplyDeleteon the tree
old family ornaments
each memory
Our granddaughter hangs up her stocking. It contains a bag of grain that she thinks reindeers probably eat. I watch as her parents fuss around this elaborate and beautiful lie.
Then to bed for all of us.
quiet midnight
the scent of pine sap
through the house
They manage to sleep till six-thirty, a miracle any day for this two-year-old. We wake to, ‘This isn’t grain!’ in the child’s singsong voice and to the sound of paper ripping. The child unpacks the stocking one foam sticker at a time, unpeeling each and sticking them to someone or something. Then she finds a long grey hair and I can guess to whom that belongs. ‘Oh look,’ says her mother, ‘Santa hair!’
sparkling
the tinselled tree
and the child’s eyes
Later my daughter whispers that she feels ambivalent about telling the untruths. I say, ‘What you are actually spinning is myth.’ and I ask how she feels about her childhood. She says she wouldn’t have swapped it. So we take more photographs of the most photographed child in the world, photographs that will show a slightly crazy, manic delight on her face.
little girl
ReplyDeletewith fairy-light eyes
christmas Tree
lovely lovely
ReplyDelete