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AnElephantCant do this week’s Haibun
So he relates a true tale from long long ago
It has way too many words
So he apologises in verse
And he understands if you just don’t want to know

Travelling all week.
Apologies.
The Haibun Ligo Challenge is a weekly event hosted by Nightlake and the Pirate.
Visit them for all the guidelines and background.
This week’s chosen prompt is:
The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful – E.E. Cummings

Nearly Five

I spend every Monday with my grandson.
I spent this Monday with my grandson.
He was excited because Tuesday was his birthday.
He would be 5!
Five years old.

‘Grandpa Brian’, he said.
‘Do you want to come to my party’, he asked me.
‘You can come if you want to’.
‘I’d love to come’, I said, ‘Nothing would make me happier’.

‘That’s good’. He smiled.
People who are nearly five smile…

October is national poetry month in Great Britain. Other countries celebrate in different months. Let’s share this one throughout the world with a whimsical poem from an American poet who lost his life in France during World War I.

Join me, please, in celebrating harmony …in poets, people, and countries.

Enjoy!

.

graphic credit: unknown

“Happiness is the harvest of a quiet eye.”–Austin O’Malley

Special thanks to our deliriously happy chipmunk visitor

and

Wishes of joy to all!

Description
The Hainan gibbon is one of the rarest monkeys in the world, possibly on the brink of extinction.  There are only twenty-six left in existence;  including three babies born this year.  And, all of these are all living within the confines of the Bawangling National Nature Reserve on the tropical island of Hainan in the South China Sea.

These delightful apes are sexually dimorphic.  Mature males are almost totally black, with occasional pale cheeks, and mature females are a pale golden colour with odd dark patches on the body and a black crest on the head.  Both have long arms and legs and no tail.

They swing through the trees using a movement known as brachiation;  something gibbons seem far more skilled at than any other species.  They swing hand over hand, carrying their long, slender bodies forward.  With their powerful muscles and supple joints, they do the job…

Grandpa’s Watch

soft old gold patina
warmed by a rough rustic palm
timing medieval birth
of my father
in candlelight colored
by frescoes of Apennine landscapes
he painted while wearing
his bridegrooming shoes
this timepiece spoke life
carried vestpocket snug
from distraught
mezzogiorno antiquity
crossing the ocean of century
ticking its tireless memories
into the hands of my uniformed son
it holds heartbreak and triumph
the bloodline experience
marking we four
generations of men
nestled deep
in its intimate gearworks
where family converges
with history

“Silence is the language of god,
all else is poor translation.”
― Rumi

I am constantly travelling in a time machine from one phase of life to another. No I don’t have a time machine but my mind is a good enough medium to make this wish true. I am either in my past, dwelling over something or in the future, fantasizing about things. Yes, I enjoy the present, but never completely.

My parents always taught me that my mind is superior. It should control my body. But mind is a part of our body, it was never meant to control our body. They co-exist to fulfill their parts. They are mistaken to be two different entities but they are two parts of the same energy.

Why can’t we stop these thoughts?

We are highly unsatisfied. Ask the Queen of England, she missed peace of mind, Ask the shopkeeper, he…

There’s the story, then there’s the real story, then there’s the story of how the story came to be told. Then there’s what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too. (p. 56)

MaddAddam, Margaret Atwood