hosts: Shalini Pattabiraman & Vidya Shankar
mentor: Lorraine Haig
A Thursday Feature
3rd October 2024
This month we have the pleasure of celebrating the work of Billie Dee.
Billie Dee is the former Poet Laureate of the U.S. National Library Service. A retired health care worker, she earned her doctorate at U.C. Irvine, completed post-graduate training at U.C. San Diego. Although she writes in a variety of genres, her primary focus is Japaniform poetry. A native Californian, she now lives in the Chihuahuan Desert with her family and a betta fish named Ramon. Billie publishes both online and off.
You can access Billie’s blog in the link attached below.
Website: www.billie-dee-haiku.blogspot.com
We bring to you our first selection.
Billie Dee
Thought Bubbles
Cleaning the fridge, I’m reminded of King Creon’s stables. But then I remember
Hercules was set free at the end of his labors, so maybe that’s the wrong analogy.
Which brings to mind the trials of Sisyphus—the endless, thankless monotony
of his toil—admittedly, on a more cosmic scale than mine, but still the same relentless
cycle of joy and suffering inherent to the known universe, down to the Planck Scale.
As I lean my shoulder into a mustard stain on the second glass shelf, I mull over
the Laws of Thermodynamics, Chaos Theory, how the Tao Te-Ching anticipated most
of this stuff centuries ago. Yeah, it’s that kind of afternoon.
on my windowsill—
this little pile of bird shit
washed away by rain
Source: Drifting Sands Haibun Journal #27, June 2024
SP: Where and how did your writing journey start?
BD: My journey began on a farm in the state of New Mexico (USA). As a preschooler, my grandmother taught me to recite from the Book of Psalms, which instilled in me the musical rhythms of the King James Bible. By my fourth birthday I was keenly interested in storytelling, lyrical speech, and what Granny called “God’s special poetry.” That attraction was reinforced by the English nursery rhymes and European fairy tales my mother read to me at bedtime.
When I started writing little rhyming verses in elementary school, it was in that Biblical voice and with 17th Century English grammar. My bemused fourth-grade teacher kindly loaned me a book of American poems, where I discovered the great poet Emily Dickenson. From that first powerful reading of “My life had stood—a loaded gun,” I was swept away by the language, and aspired to become a poet myself. I was about nine years old.
Prompt:
“It isn’t only color but a glowing, as though the leaves gobbled the light of the autumn sun and then released it slowly.” —John Steinbeck, ‘Travels with Charley in Search of America’
While Steinbeck traveled with Charley, his dog to go searching for America, where would you travel to, to witness a kind of fall—autumn, sharad, hemant, patjhad? Call it by any name, everyone's experience of the season is uniquely different. I invite you to borrow a poetic line, a myth, a scientific truth or a philosophy and ‘travel in search of…’ something magnificent stretching from the ordinary of our mundane lives and becoming extraordinary.
Take risks, shed your links to the past and find fantastic new journeys.
PLEASE NOTE:
1. Only two haibun per poet per prompt.
2. Share your best-polished pieces.
3. Please do not post something in a hurry or something you have just written.
Let it simmer for a while.
4. Post your final edited version on top of your original verse.
5. Don't forget to give feedback on others' poems.
We are delighted to open the comment thread for you to share your unpublished haibun (within 300 words) to be considered for inclusion in haikuKATHA monthly journal.
Important: Since we're swamped with submissions, and our editors are only human, mistakes can happen. Please, please, remember to put your name, followed by your country, below each poem, even after revisions. It helps our editors; they won't have to type it in, saving them from potential typos. Thanks a ton!
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PLEASE NOTE:
1. Only two haibun per poet per prompt. Please put your name and country of residence under your poem, it makes the editors' work easier. Thanks.
2. Share your best-polished pieces.
3. Please do not post something in a hurry or something you have just written.
Let it simmer for a while.
4. When poets give suggestions and if you agree to them - post your final edited version on top of your original version.
5. Don't forget to give feedback on others' poems.
We are delighted to open the comment thread for you to share your unpublished haibun (within 300 words) to be considered for inclusion in the haikuKATHA monthly journal.
#1, revised, 10/9, hope the revised is okay.
Clouded Mind
Some marine creatures reside in the homes of other empty shells. The empty oyster shell is a platform for snail eggs. The scallop's home host a cluster of scorn barnacles. Am I disturbing the marine life with my glass showcase filled with their shapes and sizes? No wonder, mine are very small and I have them thoroughly cleansed with warm water. A friend who has taken marine ecology as her special subject advised me in detail as ' how to pick up a good seashell'.
sudden rains
a stray dog waits inside
a make-shift shed
Lakshmi Iyer, India
9/10
Back Home
I read an article where few of the marine…
7/10/24 #1
Guardian
the sea
inside the silent sea
empty pier
Deep in the heart of ancient woodland, night thrums with long-forgotten stories. In shifting shadows, a goddess watches, her form spun from silver strands of moonlight. Once revered, her name fades into the forgotten folds of time, barely whispered by the stars.
Long ago, she gifted the hedgehog its sacred shield –the art of curling into a ball, a sanctuary against harm. Though human hearts have long since turned away, she keeps vigil, holding the quiet bond between herself and her small wards.
snow falls
on the winding path
no-one stirs
C.X. Turner, UK
(feedback welcome)
Post #1
8.9.24
The One
"Peace is found when the mind stops chasing and starts embracing the present moment."
- Bhagavad Gita (6.10)
On a hospital bed in the oncology unit she calls out to the doctor on duty. He comes after half an hour. By then she has vomited twice.
firefly garden
a dream or two lingers
over the jasmine
"The peace you seek is within; calm your mind, and the world will follow."
- Bhagavad Gita (6.7)
I am doing my yogic breathing when the phone rings. My sister’s attendant is calling from the hospital. “ Madam, your sister has high fever. She is asking for you”. Tears well up in my eyes as I hear her incoherent…
#2
AI Overview
The longest recorded flight of a modern chicken was thirteen seconds and covered a distance of over three hundred feet.
rock group practice
the blur of drumsticks
on a rubber pad
Keith Evetts Thames Ditton UK
comments welcome...
#2 Revised - thanks to Shalini, Lorraine and Daipayan In the Gaps
The train car feels emptier without him. For weeks, maybe months, he was always there, riding the Silver Line. He sat by the door with his tattered coat pulled tight, muttering to himself. How did he end up here? wet pavement steam billowing from a grate
Farragut West
He blended into the routine, like graffiti on the walls or the screech of the brakes echoing through the tunnels. Did the city swallow his identity?
crowded subway
strangers share a smile
over a dog's antics
McPherson Square
I catch glimpses of him, lost in his own world, as the train jerks forward. How thin is the line…