haibun | word pond

Hailstone’s 17th Autumn Haike: Mt Miwa and Tanzan Shrine | Icebox

haibun excerpt ~

They reach Tanzan Shrine, a burst of Japanese architecture, and find the festival’s main ritual is already underway. Removing their shoes, they shuffle quietly into one wide room—open at the back to a sunlit veranda hung with iron lanterns—and join the worshippers. To the shrill accompaniment of gagaku*, many elaborate displays of fruits and vegetables are brought out from deep within the shrine, carefully passed from priest to priest. A glimpse is had of a statue of the enshrined deity, Fujiwara no Kamatari*, whom the festival honours.

The Shinto priest:
a single green pepper
atop his chestnut offering
………………………… Richard

*Fujiwara no Kamatari – instigator of the Taika Reforms in C7th and founder of the Fujiwara clan

Source: Hailstone’s 17th Autumn Haike: Mt Miwa and Tanzan Shrine | Icebox

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Kev Ryan – Photographer, Artist, Activist in Loughborough Market | Burn The Water

Kev Ryan, photographer, artist, community arts activist, Loughborough Market 2018 Kev Ryan waits for the group of people signed up to his ‘What is public art? What might be public art?’…

Source: Kev Ryan – Photographer, Artist, Activist in Loughborough Market | Burn The Water

my (small press) writing day: Donna Fleischer : an altar of sorts

the teakwood desk where i sometimes write has a hinged panel at the back that expands the overall depth when it’s flipped open. otherwise, when closed, it sits upright at the back of the desk, like a piano, providing a smaller more intimate writing space and revealing variously shaped cubby holes which i like to think of as amused portals safekeeping the overheard whispers and ideas when talking with myself all these years. (continued)

Source: my (small press) writing day: Donna Fleischer : an altar of sorts

Just One More | Burn The Water

Just One More

It’s freezing cold outside but in side the Sir Robert Peel public house on Jarrom Street in Leicester its warm and packed with mainly men taking a drink before Saturday’s football match at Leicester City’s King Power Stadium. The beer here is good, a well kept cellar as they say. Walls and ceiling covered in beer mats and other pub related items. In the corner a group of five middle aged men play cards for small amounts of money, swearing happily at the guy who takes the pot three times in a row. The game is fast approaching but no one is quick to leave, timing their departure to give them just enough time to buy a hot cup of Bovril, take their seats and prepare for the kickoff.

when Saturday comes
a couple of pints
and an online bet

Little Onion

Photograph & Text Paul Conneally (Little Onion) 2018

Source: Just One More | Burn The Water

Persimmons – Part 1 | Icebox

Persimmons – part 1

I have a persimmon tree in front of my room. It has produced a rich harvest this year. In fact, like many other fruit trees, it bears a lot of fruit every other year. However, the persimmons this tree produces are very small, less than the size of ping-pong balls. I believe this tree was here long before the garden was made, and that it belongs to the species called Yamagaki (Mountain Persimmon). Its fruits are probably very sour and nobody cares for them, but as autumn deepens, their colour also deepens, till birds come and peck at them. This is the tree’s only use, but when I see it growing in the shadow of a big cherry, doing its best to survive, I cannot help cheering it on.
……………… Time for persimmons
……………… To mature and redden —
……………… The sky is so blue.
I have been close to persimmons since my childhood. We had a persimmon tree in our garden when I was at primary school. My father fastened sturdy ropes around one of its branches and made a swing for me. I was very proud of it and happily swung back and forth on it, but one day the branch broke off without warning and threw both the swing and me to the ground. Fortunately, I landed on a soft lawn, so I escaped with only scratches to my knees. This experience taught me, though, that persimmon trees were easily broken, and since then I have made it a rule not to climb them.

During our wartime evacuation, I enjoyed sweet persimmons. The earliest kind we had was called Bongineri (Bon-Festival Sweet Persimmon). Its fruits were small and had lots of seeds, but their flesh, strewn with black flecks resembling sesame seeds, was delicious. Later in autumn I would enjoy large persimmons that had been sweetened in rice chests — so big and sweet that I found them satisfying in every sense. Occasionally I enjoyed the special variety called Saijogaki (Saijo Persimmons), which I thought to be a real treasure.
……………… The sweet persimmons
……………… With dots like sesame seeds —
……………… Everyone eats laughing.

……………… Sweetened persimmons
……………… Melt on our tongues, so slow to
……………… Reach our stomachs.

Finally, a Joseph Beuys Documentary & man on a plane by Donna Fleischer

Joseph Beuys | Documentary | Hyperallergic

beuys-documentary-poster-720x1067

Poster for Beuys (2017) (courtesy Kino Lorber)

man on a plane

By hearing him speak with a flight attendant, I learn that he is from Hungary, the man in the dark brown suit and brown shoes who reminds me of the German Conceptual artist, Joseph Beuys, dressed in his overlarge felt pants and suit jacket.

During the arduous flight from Amsterdam to New York, he shifts seats from time to time: sometimes in the aisle seat, other times the window seat, and once, all three, for a nap. How is it that on this crowded plane the other two seats of his row remain empty?

the blackbirds swirl

high above snowy fields

their shadow

An attendant instructs him to keep the window shuttered during this daytime flight, for better movie viewing, even though he doesn’t watch. The ocean crossing is long and dull and people need movies to pass the time. I’m like a zealous soccer fan when he glides back over to the window and cracks open the shutter a few inches, slumped as low as he can to gaze into the sky and the sunlight for long bits of time, or draw a book close to his chest to read by that light.

Scrunched up in his wrinkled brown suit like a man in solitary confinement, the rest of us sitting somewhere between sleep and wakefulness in our poured plastic cocoons, breathing recirculated air and trying to stay occupied since leaving our bodies on the tarmac before takeoff. I wonder what will emerge when this plane touches down

sings

flies

a bird and

Donna Fleischer

bottle rockets vol 11 no 2 (#22) 2009

Alan Summers- house on the hill

Alan Summers

Ekphrastic haibun inspired by:
‘House on the Hill’ by Helen Garrett
Oil on board (80cm x 70cm)
Victoria Art Gallery exhibition: Towards the Unknown
(24 November – 13 January 2008)

a curatorial content blog of modern and contemporary poetry, poetics, photography, philosophy, permaculture, and the arts

Hailstone’s 17th Autumn Haike: Mt Miwa and Tanzan Shrine | Icebox

Kev Ryan – Photographer, Artist, Activist in Loughborough Market | Burn The Water

my (small press) writing day: Donna Fleischer : an altar of sorts

Just One More | Burn The Water

Persimmons – Part 1 | Icebox

Persimmons – part 1

Finally, a Joseph Beuys Documentary & man on a plane by Donna Fleischer

The House On The Hill by Alan Summers – the other bunny

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