Ray Rasmussen's Haiku Poems

haiku#1

reflected lantern;
stone carved by caring hands
colors tickled by playful winds

I'm working with the two images of a lantern that I took at the Kurimoto Japanese Garden near Edmonton and Devon. There's the hard, enduring stone one carved by a master from solid granite and the transient one composed of a swirl of cloud filtered colors twisted by winds on the pond. I spent some time enjoying the look of the lantern as I worked with its image in photoshop and then printed different versions. I spent several hours at Kurimoto Garden trying to capture it as a reflected image on the pond. The idea about capturing color on water goes back to a photographer's work I saw when I was in my late 20s -- beautiful reflections of boats in dock in the San Francisco Bay. The whispy, reflected colorful lantern is found here: http://raysweb.net/japanesegardens/pages/13.html where I have two other versions of this "haiku". More images of the lantern are found on my webpage here: http://raysweb.net/japanesegardens/pages/11.html and here: http://raysweb.net/japanesegardens/pages/12.html

haiku#2

the winter's darkness
trees hiding in Earth's shadow--
surprise! the full moon.

Two nights ago, walking down to whyte ave for a coffee, feeling the emptiness that comes with the dark evening when trees, houses, cars are beginning to disappear into the early dark of Winter and then seeing the full moon rise out of the shadow. Thinking of darkness as a shadow, which it is. Thinking of the trees as hiding, then being caught out, relit--surprised as I was.

haiku#3

overhead, geese murmuring--
feathered arrows shot southward
by winter's bow

Every fall, I am renewed by the sound of geese flying south or, in the spring, arriving from the south and heading north. First, the gabbling sounds, then I look up and see them in Vs ... sometimes hundreds, sometimes only a few ... resolutely announcing the arrival of a new season. It's as if they're talking to me. As I walked tonight, I had the idea that winter was somehow sending them. Then I associated the Vs with arrows.

The panel on the right is from a Meji Period 4-panel silk embriodery screen.