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Caroline Bobby's avatar

gorgeous haikus - and the pictures

once I committed to write a haiku each day now matter what, for a year - my year of haiku. It was a way to have a little meeting with myself, a ritual of sorts, or a practice.

Some were rather pedestrian, of course... then sometimes it was more like they flew in on the wing and astonished me. This is one of those.

Keeping hold of faith

Not really, faith moves through me

like it knows the way

man of aran's avatar

Very nice, Caroline! Thanks for sharing that. Love the turn it takes, from a somewhat conventional thought to a truer perception. I admire your dedication.

Richbee's avatar

Chopsticks beams

Remarkably bright

Liberty 🗽lights

man of aran's avatar

Thanks and thanks for the restack, Richard!

Ronald Drimmel's avatar

These are all wonderful. Question: What is the date of the NYC photo? Comment: poetic that the last photo is black&white.

man of aran's avatar

Thanks Ronald! The NYC photo is from a 2019 trip for my 60th birthday. Glad you liked the last photo.

Dian Parker's avatar

Love the last one!

man of aran's avatar

Thanks! 🙏

Chen Rafaeli's avatar

These hit strong. Great pairings. Thank you so much for sharing, Alan

Kim Nelson's avatar

That last poem!!!

KR (Kenneth Rosen)'s avatar

Some of us here get the message. I have of late, and I do know wherefore, lost all my mirth. Writing a little at least locks in the mind. Otherwise it's vacuumed of agency in the name of freedom, or as if Venezualen. Nebulous dread is prophetic. Would it were also calisthenic and hygienic. Hope is a rabbit pulled by its pathetic ears out of a madman's bottomless hat and declared to be magic. Yeats wrote 'The center can not hold.' Or as an old man would say, All hell's breaking loose! My God, let's not let it trivialize us. 'That way madness lies!' Muttered another old man, King Lear.

man of aran's avatar

Not trivialized, no, not you, not me. Keep the faith, Kenneth. May your mirth return.

KR (Kenneth Rosen)'s avatar

Well, yeah! Thanks, Alan--I was truly in a hole--today I described in the foul well Joseph of The Bible was tossed by his more powerful older brothers for naively flaunting his gifted coat of many colors, but today at last feel as if I'm climbing out, dodging at least so far slavery in Egyptland, etc. Cheers.

man of aran's avatar

Good 👍. Slavery anywhere is to be assiduously avoided!

Donal McKernan's avatar

He knew that those things we most desire to hold in our hearts are often taken from us while that which we would put away seems often by that very wish to become endowed with unsuspected powers of endurance. He knew how frail is the memory of loved ones. How we close our eyes and speak to them. How we long to hear their voices once again, and how those voices and those memories grow faint and faint until what was flesh and blood is no more than echo and shadow. In the end perhaps not even that.

He knew that our enemies by contrast seem always with us. The greater our hatred the more persistent the memory of them so that a truly terrible enemy becomes deathless. So that the man who has done you great injury or injustice makes himself a guest in your house forever. Perhaps only forgiveness can dislodge him. - Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain