Cell 2 Soul: The Humane Health Care Blog

Every Sky!

After this...It's all clear profit...Every Sky!  Basho

Northwest Hill Rd. 7:00 am 2/20/2012

Two Death Poems and Three Death Haiki

Death Has A Sound
By Marla Lukofsky

Death is the deepest of silence.
It's a quiet unlike any other.
Do you hear that?
Be still and listen.
There it is.
A quiet unlike any other.

See "The Hospice Flute."

GENTLY INTO THE NIGHT
By Sue Mayfield Geiger

I watch carefully as the hospice team changes his hospital gown and rolls him over.

The I.V., catheter, and oxygen are removed. Deep breaths heave in and out of his body.

I stroke his forehead and thank him for being a wonderful father.  I go home.

The phone rings early the next morning, and I know.

 

Comment:  Writing death haiku was a tradition in Japan.  The three greatest haiki poets, Basho, Buson and Issa's Death Poems follow.

Basho
    Sick on a journey,
my dreams wander
    the withered fields.

Buson
    Winter warbler --
Long ago in Wang Wei's
    Hedge also.

Issa
    A bath when you're born.
A bath when you die.
    How stupid.

Summer Haiku

Hot July blue sky

Deep dark tree shade pools on lawn --

High summer is here

by Mrs. B. Geer

Bennington, Vermont

Basho - Violets

Star Magnolia

very brief --
star magnolia blossoms
punctuate the Spring

10,000 Buddhas

On a recent visit to Japan, Ginny Tanji captured a vivid image:

the hillside temple's
paper lanterns burn brightly --
10,000 Buddhas!

Splendor in the Grass

speechless before

    summer's green leaves and grass

in blazing sunlight   (after basho)

 

"Splendour in the grass" is from Wordsworth's Ode: Intimations for Immortality which Mike Lacombe recalled for us.

Issa Lives

from now on, it's all clear profit, every sky.  Issa

Happy May Day

Fumiko Sakata M.D., Ph.D. (1916-1998) is remembered as a warm and humorous mother, wife, doctor and friend. For more complete biography: Download Sakata.pdf

Fuji-san: View from MA

Elaine Adler sent this beautiful view of Mt. Fuji from her Lexington, Massachusetts garden.  Her riposte to the Sept. 1 Fuji post.

Correction: I was just poking around on the web and happened to click your blog.  Surprised to see the description of my photo.   Sorry if I misled you -- and now anyone who happens to read the clip.

The photo I sent was taken at Fujidera, a Buddhist temple in the foothills of Mt. Fuji.  It is one of the many photos from my tour of Buddhist temples in Japan posted at http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixelaine/collections.  It rained the entire first week of our trip, and we never did see Mt. Fuji despite our proximity to it.  At Fujidera, I asked the resident priest where Fuji would be if she were visible.  As we stood on the porch overlooking the temple's garden, he pointed.  The photo I sent to you is where Fuji would have been had she not been hiding in the clouds.  Even in good weather, there would be no view of Fuji from my garden. Elaine Adler