Category Archives: Haiku

February 28, 2023 · 3:50 pm

Nothing By Half – Haibun by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Frank is hosting the Haibun with an invitation to write prose about Mezza Luna or half moon.

dVerse Poets – Haibun – Mezza Luna

“There can be no vulnerability without risk ….” M. Scott Peck

Nothing By Half

I like to play with moon, we have such fun together whatever we choose to do. Tonight she called out by half, indeed she cradled me, such was her shape for loving. She had that look, which is to say, that despite appearances, nothing was by half with her. She appeared velvety, like a piece of cacao in a Viennese cafe, waiting to be softly grated into my cup. And I sighed long in anticipation of the pleasure.

It takes a certain vulnerability to drink down this draught of love so rich in texture, it seems to coat the tongue with memory and warm the heart to an opening unanticipated. To feel that warmth, that connection, is beyond any words. All at once, nothing can be said and yet everything can be said. Moon just smiled and I melted in her froth tonight. I am mezza to her half.

slowly drinking moon
pouring love generously
heart strangely open



Copyright 2023 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
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January 31, 2023 · 2:09 pm

My Heart Is True – Haibun by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Frank is hosting Haibun with an invitation to write about heart.

dVerse Poets – Haibun – Heart

Photo by Isabella Mariana: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-raising-his-hands-with-heart-illustration-1988698/

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.” Blaise Pascal

My Heart Is True

My quartet, sometimes pumping major, sometimes minor chords, of deep, deep feeling, be they ecstatic or other, less so. To be moved is to know joy and pain, even simultaneously. To be lifted is to know the bounds of passions flavours. Moments like these I feel in my temples, my chest, my breath or lack of it for want of air.

My quartet, all four chambers, never suspended, never diminished, though often augmented with all kinds of bargained feelings of love, forgiveness, joy, pain, fear. It all wells and heaves in my body needing time to be discerned before any sense of consolation or desolation can be determined towards a course of action, if at all. I am uncertain as to who conducts who, but I am certain my heart is true. 

My heart is beating
like the wings of a love bird
flying close to you



Copyright 2023 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

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January 3, 2023 · 2:58 pm

The Great Adventure – Haibun by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Kim is hosting the Haibun (prose + haiku) – the first for 2023 and the first pub event for 23 too, with an invitation to write about our feelings for the new year.

dVerse Poets – Haibun – Fireworks and a Dripping Tap

Photo: Summer in the bay, one of several local bays, Hamelin Bay.

“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” Albert Einstein

The Great Adventure

So, it’s a new year? I guess we need such a boundary, perhaps life would be difficult if it felt open ended, a kind of nihilist enterprise. Perhaps, too, beginnings and endings provide a sense of continuity. But does continuity connote purpose or self understanding? I wonder. At the very least a year is a frame to hang my process of life on and make my way. I prefer to order my years around celebrations and gatherings, for me a year is about community, I need that.

Perhaps it’s about telos? A year offers beginnings but also conclusions that enable the mind to adjust to a time continuum. A proscribed year offers a place to aim for, a safety valve enabling a break, time to stop, an opportunity to change pace, or even direction. I find such rhythms helpful in navigating energy and health.

My days ahead are very full, it will be challenging, in the best possible ways. I will be stretched. I have come far, I now know that new years are just years and they simply my years as I make them, mother nature not-with-standing. I have also learned that I am enough, I am who I am and that is a good thing. For the most part a year is something to be grasped and lived as an adventure. Perhaps this year there’ll be for me an annuation?

time so neatly boxed
fireworks a beginning
the year resolves.



Copyright 2023 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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November 22, 2022 · 2:44 pm

Rattling Wind – Haibun by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Linda is hosting the Haibun with an invitation to write about Autumn’s Voice (aki noe koe). For details of Haibun follow the link below:

dVerse Poets – Haibun – aki noe koe

Photo: lanur at pixabay.com

“There is nothing so stable as change.” Bob Dylan

Rattling Wind

What rattles you? As for me, so few things. But one of the true things that rattles me is an unexpected breeze. Now it’s not that breezes are unwelcome, especially on a hot day, a stagnant day or after a bush-fire, they can be so cleansing. And yet. And yet a sudden breeze can rattle my soul, leave me feeling uneasy, even pining for change or some new moment, a moving on, a horizon yet unseen.

Unexpected breezes are the siren of the freeways, the moment of grief intruding on a pleasant day, the uneasy sense of a phone ringing when least anticipated, news of a death near to one’s soul. Just like someone jumping out in the quiet dark, or appearing out of context. The unexpected grief can be the bearer of such wonders, and yet evoke such shock.

What rattles me? As for you, perhaps, so few things, but as for me the unexpected breeze blowing beyond my control, beyond my understanding of the next moment. What is in the breeze? Its freedom, unrestrained, random, beyond who I am. It is time to make friends with the breeze, how else shall I make sense of it?

The wind blows so free
releasing my soul to me
O how change rattles



Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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August 30, 2022 · 2:36 pm

Shedding – Haibun by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Mish is hosting Haibun Monday with an invitation to write about Shelter.

dVerse Poets – Haibun – Give Me Shelter

“A house is a home when it shelters the body and comforts the soul.” Phillip Moffit

Shedding

I sought the rusted sheets with popped springhead nails that constituted a place of imperfect refuge, where the wind rattled the loosening sheets with devilish thoughts of crisis, and the rain laughed in penetrating bullets of inaccuracy that threatened reality. The corrie strained and shifted with metallic moans that wrenched my gut as the rain drenched my sense of doubt.

In the shed I shed tears of sorrow as the storm passed both within and without, and I longed for the assurance of summer’s dry calm, that quiet air of warm repose offering slow, delicate thoughts of life so different to this winter of my soul. In letting go I found a peace of incomplete and imperfect arrival, with none of the expected sophistication of a revival of soul, just the plain ordinariness of self understanding.

In the shed I shed my skins of old, like a python letting a season’s past regress, and the salt that burned my cheeks retired. And though the memories are retained I no longer own them. This place of shelter from the elements is shelter from my storm.

Winter's rusted sheets
let water slowly leak in
my soul is hidden


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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August 2, 2022 · 3:06 pm

The Whole View – Haibun by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Merril is hosting Haibun Monday with an invitation to look up, and write about the experience.

dVerse Poets – Haibun – Look Up

Photo: Bluff Knoll, first you have to go down before you start to climb up the mount, here covered in fog and rain. This was a great days climb and well worth the experience.

“Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.” Maya Angelou 

The Whole View

My experiences of looking up are experiences of momentarily leaving myself, placing myself in the cosmos, letting go any singular rootedness and finding community with all things and all beings, animate and inanimate, rocks and trees, mountains, the sky and all it holds. I don't feel diminished by the bigness of it all, I feel included, and I feel moved to include all things. In that sense of acceptance comes a deep sense of harmony and belonging for me.

To look at the grandeur of a tree and trace its linear circuitry, to reach out to the sky and know its infinity, to view the mountain and feel its strength and presence, are deeply moving for me. Looking up at this mountain reminds I am not the centre of life, not even my own, I am simply a part of the whole that seeks life together. To look up at this mountain is a reminder that I have no control over it and no need to do so. The call of this mountain is to take pleasure in its gift of diverse experiences that enable me to know a little more about life and who I am and a lot of letting go and not knowing.

Looking up the mount
I saw the heavens opened
jasmine tea goes cold 


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

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June 21, 2022 · 4:02 pm

Stilled – Haibun by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Frank is hosting the Haibun with an invitation to write about the summer/winter solstice depending on which side of the equator we live.

dVerse Poets – Haibun – Solstice

Photo: Winter clouds make for accentuated sunrises over the Blackwood River.

“One way of celebrating the Solstice is to consider it a sacred time of reflection, release, restoration, and renewal.” Sarah Ban Breathnach

Stilled

For the first time in a long time, a very long time it seems, I have simply stopped completely for a few days. I no longer miss my race around the sun to make meaning for someone else’s fortune, I long to make meaning for my own. there is something precious about distilling the day, spending time in recollection at evening and savouring the good moments, panning for the gold of the day.

There is a wonderful feeling that comes with stopping, slowing, taking time, knowing that the horizon is there, but also knowing it can wait. The wisdom of age is knowing when to stop, slow and take time, and when, even how, to move again and in which direction and when to be excited by a new horizon. For as surely as the earth turns, new horizons are aplenty. Right now I am still and awaiting my next step.

The world is turning
humans race to the finish 
stillness brings blossom


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️

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May 24, 2022 · 3:53 pm

Summer – Haibun by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Frank is hosting Haibun (prose plus haiku) with an invitation to write about summer.

dVerse Poets – Haibun – Summer

Photo: ratemds.com

“Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.” Sam Keen

Summer

From my youngest days this has always been a time when the earth catches fire, when my skin burns and I can feel the strength of the air around me pushing down as it falls to the ground. My breathing is heavier , though I move from shade to shade I cannot escape the heat of this day. Even the cicada chorale chant at the sun is to no avail, the light blindsides me bouncing off every surface, dazzling, relentless.

It feels like a furnace, the garden bows after noon, the bitumen is melting, my shirt is dark down the middle of my back. But this is no time for whingeing, this is the time to pack away the winter blues, open the windows, throw off my layers, sit out at night watching the stars, light the BBQ and party like there's no tomorrow.

The sun is rising 
house is already on fire
but there is no smoke


Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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April 26, 2022 · 4:16 pm

Rejoice – Haibun by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Frank is hosting Haibun Monday with an invitation to write about bird songs.

dVerse Poets – Haibun – Bird Songs

Photo: a cormorant or shag sitting on the boardwalk at Bunbury Wetlands.

“I once asked a bird, how is it that you fly in this gravity of darkness? She responded, ‘love lifts me.'” Hafez

Rejoice

I've never not heard a bird sing. There's never been a moment when bird song has failed to cut through the joy or tragedy of a day, to surmount the ineffable experiences of life or the tumult of blood
rush, some conjured excitement or foreboding feeling.

I've heard magpies in the heat of the night, curlews before a storm, the flit and twit of honeyeaters no matter the rain, the wattle bird's beak snapping through my mind, crows in the haze of bush fire, the beautiful song of the butcher bird in the middle of a wedding.

Birds, those harbingers of joy, care not for our circumstances and yet they conspire to bring us unbridled joy. Their's is a life sung and we are the privileged guests for their performance. There's never been a moment when I haven't rejoiced in the song of a bird.

Musk duck quinks a joy
as rain washes the low reeds
songs part autumn clouds




Note: Quink is the closest onomatopoeia to the sound of the musk duck I could come up with and then I found it is indeed a word - a type of goose!

Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
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March 29, 2022 · 2:39 pm

Blossom Delight – Haibun by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Frank is hosting the Haibun (prose plus haiku) with an invitation to write about Cherry Blossom.

dVerse Poets – Haibun Monday – Cherry Blossoms

Photo: wallpapersin4k.org

“What a strange thing! To be alive beneath cherry blossoms.” Kobayashi Issa

Blossom Delight

The beauty of cherry blossom carries and obvious feminine comparison. So many possible metaphors of bloom, petals, pastel, limb and fruit, and not least strong roots. And what a spectacle it is, the few we have here catch my eye and set my heart alight every spring and summer.

But not my palate. While my lover loves to gorge on cherries, I prefer just looking at the blossom as the fruit is not to my taste, though I admit, it looks fabulous and feels good too it is not a fruit I enjoy. And that is so true of many things, as is the reverse. My lover is my delighting fruit, but there are many blossoms to appreciate along the avenue of life.

Cherry had beauty
smooth limbs budding before me
rising love blossoms



Copyright 2022 ©Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®

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