Wearing vermilion

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All day I’ve noticed
folk wearing vermilion,
but still, since summer,
most of us have been wearing
this year’s fashion colour – black.

(Friday 13 March 2015)

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NOTES:

“Vermilion is a brilliant red or scarlet pigment originally made from the powdered mineral cinnabar, and is also the name of the resulting color. It was widely used in the art and decoration of Ancient Rome, in the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages, in the paintings of the Renaissance, and in the art and lacquerware of China, where it is often called ‘Chinese Red’.” (Wikipedia)

See also: Pigments through the Ages

What’s in a name?

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After yesterday’s
rain, this morning’s air is sweet.
My neighbours have a
fragrant tree … and no, I don’t
know its botanical name.

(08 March 2015)

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Tanka consist of five units (often treated as separate lines when romanized or translated) usually with the following pattern of on: 5-7-5-7-7.

The 5-7-5 is called the kami-no-ku (上の句 “upper phrase”), and the 7-7 is called the shimo-no-ku (下の句 “lower phrase”). (Wikipedia)

Starting again … again

water feature (25 January 2009)

Nothing of my past
(or virtually nothing)
seems suitable now;
not quite inappropriate
– merely ineffectual.

This morning I snapped
the connection between now
and my history.
Don’t ask me who I am; time
starts now … and again starts now.

(10 June 2013)

__________

Written yesterday, the tanka serves as a marker: I am starting again … again. 

The image, shot in 2009 but not selected for display, now appeals to me afresh.

 

Jadin Bell

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Postscript:

At first no language
offered itself. Gradually
I have uttered it.
These words … are they plain enough
for you to read love between?

Image credit: http://www.facebook.com/GayMarriageUSA

PPS: see also Killing our children, posted on 21 October 2013.

Out in the bluster

Out in the bluster,
drunk now after four glasses
of red, wondering
what to have for my dinner,
recalling lunch – noodle soup.

(09 October 2012)

Bird feeder

Sparrows and blackbirds
take breakfast in my courtyard.
Yesterday, new guests:
two chaffinches. And, today,
tiny, darting silver-eyes.

Not the road to Damascus?

Unshaded light-source,
naked filament, blinding,
searing and scarring …
Is this, then, enlightenment?
or merely experience?

Garden on a wet night

In the dark, dripping
oleanders crowd around,
ivy sluices my
shirt-sleeves, crushed geranium
sprigs perfume the gravel path.

Seen in the street

Out at the edge of
what I see clearly, something
flutters, half-perceived:
red plaid shirt, spiked black hair … ah!
there! a monarch butterfly.

Penetrating vision

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

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One simple image –
one sharp, embedded shard wounds,
pierces the eye.
I want to capture, possess,
exhibit what I have seen.

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. (John Fitzgerald Kennedy)