warm lights of Christmas
cradled in the dark like faith’s
blessed, blissed mysteries
*
illuminating
wonders in the everyday –
stars reflecting us
*
link us to each other
and our gods glowing golden,
lighting our lives in warmth
*
**
*
Omm
24 december 2018
This is a deceptively simple seasonal haiku chain which nicely mingles the pagan and the Christian memes of our winter holidays and celebrates a togetherness and shared warmth which can reach across communities and religions to light up our lives.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
Thank you, James, and I hope you and yours likewise have a lit Christmassy holiday season!
The dark cradles the warm light like a baby.
The light cannot exist, cannot be without the darkness, from which it springs forth.
And “we”, we cannot be linked, cannot come close to each other without that mix of light and darkness.
A pagan invocation of light and togetherness.
And, a Holy Trinity of Haiku.
1. Father – Faith, Light, cradling.
2. Son – Joimed with us in the Everyday, “reflecting us”.
3. Holy Ghost – Linking us, “lighting our lives in warmth”.
There’s something profoundly unsettling in the move from the apparently Christian bromide of the opening haiku to the ambiguous pagan final haiku. The “gods glowing golden|||lighting our lives in warmth” could as easily be setting us alight in a cosmic conflagration of death, as warming us up with cosy awarenesses of our onenesses within the Universe.
Yes, how true, Ashish, – passion, warmth and heat often come at a cost.
Haiku of deeply resonating simplicity harbouring huge complexity.
It is fascinating to see the unending layers of meaning uncovering themselves as one reads and immerses oneself in the poetry.
It is for me one of poetry’s greatest pleasures – its way of expressing truths which are often undisclosed to most. Not hidden perhaps unless hiding in plain sight.
In this case the photograph of lanterns works better as an affirmation of warmth and positive light than as a suggestion of the darker impulses at work, as mentioned by Ashish above.
For this haiku chain I prefer the perhaps naive and more cuddly interpretation, although I suppose that could change depending on my mood while reading.
Thank you, Verity! Naive and cuddly interpretations are always welcome. Regarding poetry’s way of getting at truths undisclosed elsewhere, I too see this as one of the most potent of poetry’s powers. Poetry is the closest we get to overcoming the state famously described by William James: “We may be in the universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all.”