reignite – haiku chain

Night. A single star

Burns, smudged by smog, smokelike clouds

Then blotted out. Dark

*

As my mood when you

Are gone – warmth and light snuffed out

Like a single flame

*

As the waxing moon

Is smothered behind storm clouds

Passing blind below

*

We absent ourselves

In darkness, deep depressions

Hiding from the sun

*

We dig a hole in

The plot of our own story –

Gotta stop digging:

*

Look up, wrap ourselves

In glowing glory, endless

Potentiality

*

Sea, sky, stars and moon

And this solitary earth

Spinning round the sun

*

That storm seething past

Stokes our sluggish blood till time

Reignites the sky.

*

**

*

Omm

September 2018

Comments

  1. James Wood says

    This is a powerful poem that opens up some powerful tensions. I’m reading this two ways at least:- in the first, there’s a circularity as one depression leads to another; in the second, this offers a way out of depression – by stopping digging the hole in the plot of our own stories, we can look up and get a better perspective on our lives, and let the light come flooding back, reigniting the sky..

  2. Beautiful and unsettling. The poem skirts the edge between depression and its resolution in light and creativity, sketching or adumbrating the connection between the two.

  3. Scarlett Ong says

    – “glowing glory” – “time / Reignites the sky”
    – How nature and cosmology can help overcome depression with their power.
    – Although it can also be nature that snuffs out the warmth and light, to begin with.
    These haiku speak to a similar dualism.

Speak Your Mind

*