Summer Haikus

Warm skin draped in white,
She breathes in with slow delight
A sapling’s fragrance.

Under my paintbrush,
Green sea lapping a white beach
Slipping out of reach

The salt earth sucked dry,
Tumbleweeds & desert cacti
Turn up to the sky

—okei

Painting by Pablo Segarra Chías

The Castle on the Hill

The Castle on the Hill 

Once there was water here


It ran down the valleys


As tall grasses and trees 


Lent over and drank deep.

Now there is no water,


But where a stream had run


A rocky path remains

A path I follow


To lead me home


Away from here

From this place of secret beauty,
Down from the castle that I climbed
Down from the sea and sky

Up and over these winding hills
Into the woods encircling them 
Out to the world that man has built 
And a place where I can drink.

…

Before I reach my destination,
Two girls on bicycles stop to read a map—
I ask, and they are kind to lend me
Two squirts from their drinking bottle,
Enough to save me on my way.

Photo: “Castel de Montgri” by —okei

Unexpected Beauty

Eyes not up nor down, 
   focused on the heart.
Each step could go right 
   or left or walk into 
   another universe. 
Each breath, 
   each moment, 
      awake!

—okei

"Each step could go right or left or walk into another universe." Hille said: I like that. :) I think I am mostly doing the last these days, when synchronicity keeps bombarding you then no sort of fiction can surpass the strangeness of reality!

I really was doing walking meditation while using this poem (which I'd written 3 days earlier) as a contemplation technique, a philosophy of "expect the unexpected" and a sense of presence in every moment, when I turned the corner and was stopped in my tracks by this beautiful rainbow...and of course the desire to grasp it surfaced and I just had to take out my mobile to photograph it.

Karol said: How good is this.!... Thanks for the beautiful poem, the beautiful rainbow, and a very good technique.

Children & Nature Haikus

I have seen a bird
Fly halfway across the world,
Then vanish in mist.

With eyes of a child,
“That tree,” she says, “is even
Taller than the hill.”

“It had a headstart,”
I thought, “because its roots grew
High as well as deep.”

Two children jump
Over a puddle.
Then one exclaims,
“The rain has stopped!”

--okei