roots of elegance

Carpe Diem #872 our journey continues: across the field; one patch of a rice field; roots of elegance

Excerpt from Basho's Narrow Road to the Far North:

"Pushing towards the north, I crossed the River Abukuma, and walked between the high mountains of Aizu on the left and the three villages of Iwaki, Soma, and Miharu on the right, which were divided from the villages of Hitachi and Shimotsuke districts by a range of low mountains. I stopped at the Shadow Pond, so called because it was thought to reflect the exact shadow of any object that approached its shore. It was a cloudy day, however, and nothing but the grey sky was reflected in the pond. I called on the Poet Tokyu at the post town of Sukagawa, and spent a few days at his house. He asked me how I had fared at the gate of Shirakawa. I had to tell him that I had not been able to make as many poems as I wanted, partly because I had been absorbed in the wonders of the surrounding countryside and the recollections of ancient poets. It was deplorable, however, to have passed the gate of Shirakawa without a single poem worth recording, so I wrote:

roots of elegance

on this trip to the far north

rice-planting song 

© Basho (Tr. Jane Reichhold)"

In response to the line, 'roots of elegance', thoughts go back to prose written in an OB Gyn waiting room.  It is neither haiku nor haibun.  Rather a spirit of journeys of lives and roots entertwined.  

OB - Gyn

A place 

of sisters

Only girls

Ladies only

Except for

 the

expectant partner

or glowing new dad 

or the babe swaddled in blue.

The sisters sit in silence

Magazines lay unread

except for 

matronly 

hands.

Digital readers

Smart phones aglow

in the hands of youth.

The matrons

smile as

a sister round

with child

struggles from 

the chair.

We sit in

silence

but

we sisters 

are linked

from the pink

swaddled babe

to the eldest,

to the silent

angels 

of the 

past.
Linked by roots of elegance....

Janice Adcock

1/31/2013

Stuff that rolled around in my head while sitting in the OB-Gyn Waiting Room.  Updated for this post.

Thanks to Chèvrefeuille for daily prompts on 

CARPE DIEM HAIKU KAI