Coming Together (haiku chain)

In the still soft hours

Of night I wake as if alone

In bed although we’re not

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Still there in each space

Between kisses in each breath while

We sleep love completes us

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When we’ve way too much

Unsaid we want to say and

Much unshared to share

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Even in silence

Our closeness warms us fills us

Speaks us forever:

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Coming together

After time apart too long

Fills a voiceless void

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Our lovers’ talk so close

Lasts longer far than mere remembered life

Never really ends

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While we’re together

Hold each moment hold each one

In fullness of love

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Even in silence

Still warmth eloquence love

Speak us forever

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Freddie Omm

(very loosely translated from an original Meditation by Philippe de Saint Maurice)

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I took the photo of the sunset through a window, quite dirty, in San Francisco.

we come alive

from the way we act
when we’re in love you’d think love
wounds and hurts us most
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in life – though things far
bitterer are daily thought and done –
love hits us hardest
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– at times though we seem not
to even know we’re alive
while we’re here living
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we can’t remember
our births, don’t believe in our
deaths – all too human
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errors throughout life
shape our being – our delicate
small blue fragile world –
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it’s quite likely that
love changes us because love
makes us come alive
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as time goes past pain
fades but love’s the thing that lasts
to save us from ourselves
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when we kiss and touch
our loving tenderness makes
hard living softer
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we come alive then
love ourselves into being
loving mortal gods
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freddie omm

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This haiku chain is loosely translated from a Meditation of Philippe de Saint Maurice.

love became a lonely land: autumnal haiku chain

leaves on loam

leaves like love let go

spiral down to snoozing earth,

dark, russet-brown loam.

*

when fall took those leaves

love became a lonely land—

warmth withdrawn, wan sun’s

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waning light bled slow

blind trails of mud and sodden

footsteps veined with ice

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wan sun's waning light bled slow blind trails

where ghosts shadowed past,

skulked all through that leafless land

to haunt our autumns…

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stark, unfelled, strange-boughed—

love’s remains in lonely land:

bare old beeches, clumped,

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storm-ridden and gaunt,

sheltering our homeless hearts,

winterblown—like us,

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love’s a vagabond

wandering to a nameless place

of endless leaving—

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on tracks untravelled

from fall to spring, we will see

leaves, let go, return.

leaves, let go, return

leaves, let go, return

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 – I originally wrote this haiku chain on Twitter — a bad habit of mine — poetry on Twitter being so hit and miss, nobody’s looking for it — but I find it a good place maybe for knocking out a first draft.

– When I’d written it I thought Love is a lonely land was a new phrase but then I checked and I saw I had actually lifted it (subconsciously…) from an old, sweet song.

–  This was Billie Holiday’s beautiful, mournful Deep Song (by Cory and Cross), which includes the line:

Love lives in a lonely land

and ends:

Love is a barren land, a lonely land/A lonely land.

–  That’s a song I must have listened to more than a couple dozen times since childhood (my parents also loved Billie Holiday).

– At any rate, my haiku chain has ended up as a sort of retort — a positive echo if you like — to the somewhat bleak sentiments of Deep Song

– So thanks to Billie, Cory and Cross!

– And here’s their song in all its glory:

Billie Holiday: Deep Song