3 haiku: summer rain flowers
Posted on June 19th, 2009 by papRika
Out of blue
irises summer
skies unfurl
–
Falling sky
Blue hydrangeas cloud
the garden
–
Blue iris
tongues uncurl to catch
water pearls
–
© Sara Dias
Out of blue
irises summer
skies unfurl
–
Falling sky
Blue hydrangeas cloud
the garden
–
Blue iris
tongues uncurl to catch
water pearls
–
© Sara Dias
When autumn winds howl low and long
through soil and root of this old tree,
I hear a multitude of leaves in song,
but, a lonely crow on naked bough I see.
© Sara Dias
Sy staan op nat strate met wingerdroes in haar kop,
haar trui toegerek oor haar blinkrooi top.
Vir die Audi pluk sy haar kortmou-kind nader,
vir vanaand se plesier offer sy hom op.
© Sara Dias
Spider’s web sparkles
Pendent summer raindrops long
for the swelling sea
—
In haste, summer clouds
leave countless rainbows behind
Iridescent trout
© Sara Dias
Scudding clouds signal summer’s
rain with dots and dashes,
interrupting the sun
in long and short flashes.
© Sara Dias
Etch’d against far hills
her lime scarf turns feldgrau:
he stops waving
© Sara Dias
In the Chicago Tribune an entry about the newly-elected president of the United States reads:
“Barack Obama was elected president on Nov. 4, 2008, becoming the first African-American to claim the highest office in the land, an improbable candidate fulfilling a once-impossible dream.”
Since the hullabaloo about the inauguration of America’s first ‘black’ president, something started gnawing at me: Not once did I hear anyone ask: “Would this fanfare about a non-white president in the White House not be more convincing if it was a Native American occupying the oval office?”
A president named Wallace Red Elk would surely have been a truly “improbable candidate” worthy of such excessive celebrations.
For years, I have been wondering, “What happened to the Native American Indians? Why do I not hear anything about them in the news?” Now and then I have to Google them just to make sure they still exist.
We are so quick, especially here in Africa, to mount a soap box while singing for our machine guns in order to berate and confront and intimidate all the racists and all those who dare criticize our leadership and our non-, er, African-democratic ways. We applaud the fact that Barack Obama visited his ‘ancestral home’ in Kenya, but we do not question his neglect to visit his forefathers’ home in England, and we don’t make too much about his white maternal heritage. Let us not open a book we do not want to read: subtext is the enemy of cocks populi, especially here in South Africa.
If we follow footnotes leading us to other marginalized indigenous people who stand as slim a chance of sitting in the highest office in South Africa, we realise that we would probably never read in the news that “Magdalena Kruiper-Vaalbooi was elected president on April 22, 2009, becoming the first woman, and the first person from the San community, to claim the highest office in South Africa.”
Sara Dias
Four Cats
I’m moulded into slumber,
curved around half-moons,
as four bold bodies
knead me in the night.
My folds expand, then furl,
holding and releasing fur;
my bosom is spooned hollow,
my legs scooped out;
and so transmuted
I’m wedged in comfort -
nudged and pawed
to enclose their shapes.
As wakefulness pours
in with the light
and lifts me away,
every morning finds this
silted heart souffléed.
© Sara Dias
She numbers slow steps,
one, two, one, two,
to the mailbox and back;
delaying the need
for conversation.
Sorrow demands silence,
and can’t count beyond two.
A soft breeze
lifts her white hair
and tugs at the comfort
of her perfume;
her pink smile stays fast
for the short walk
to the gate at the end
of the brick-faced complex.
The newspaper,
twice-folded to fit
the narrow slots
of letter boxes,
remains unopened:
murder and robbery
constrained in its margins;
her fear tightly wound.
His hands are not there
to page and discard:
his voice was lost
in last year’s headlines.
Sorrow demands solitude,
and won’t count beyond one.
© Sara Dias
Whenever I water the garden,
I direct a fine spray
high into the trees:
I know the witogies will come.
Only tiny details
catch my eye –
never the whole –
as they flit suddenly
into existence.
Hop hopping
from branch to leaf,
they chase down drops –
equally elusive bodies of light.
With quick flicks
of wing and tail,
and lusty shaking
of feathers,
their spirited cheeps
trill their delight:
the few drops of water
enough for their shower;
an ocean of joy for me.
I believe for a moment
that they come solely to lift me,
and I am burdened for them.
© Sara Dias
witogies (Kaapse Glasogie) Cape White-eyes