Calligraphic Haiga 2

Two more picture-poems from older notebooks, rediscovered last week as I was sorting through papers. Notebooks brushed into with black-ink brush-pens, quick thoughts and poems, quick drawings made spontaneously, following the mind that is following the brush.

I am in the process of moving house, and going through box after box of old papers and magazines, things I set aside "to be sorted later." Later is now, and I want to lighten my load as much as possible at this point. I found these two haiga in a journal/sketchbook I occasionally wrote in last year, in the middle of sleepless nights; those nights when you wake up in the middle of the night, and can't get back to sleep, in which art-making becomes a form of restful and calming meditation. (I wrote earlier about this here.)



There are short poems in this rediscovered notebook as well—fragments, haiku, just thoughts in the dark hours between midnight and dawn—also brushed rather than penned.



in the window
blue-silver light spills on snow—
moon of popping trees

A poem I could have written this past month of heavy snows, bitterly cold nights, days not much warmer, when icicles hung low from the eaves, and thin branches of the woods by the house, branches sometimes encased in ice to make crystal wands, would break off and fall into the snow, leaving calligraphic marks in their wake.



after sex, after sleep,
leave me a kiss as you leave
my bed for your own

so I know you
still love me

A tanka in winter, and as so many tanka are, about love that is impermanent.