Haibun, May 2008

WORLD HAIKU REVIEW Volume 6 Issue 3 - May 2008

HAIBUN

And, What Is Love?

by

Kala Ramesh, Pune, India

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winter rain

on the window a rhythmic beat

to our love making

Oh mom, she said – you can’t keep writing such mushy stuff!

But this is the truth Kalyani, I’m just putting it down as a haiku poem. This is what I call transcending reality!

What?! My daughter exclaimed.

Ok, now how about this one, I asked her. . .

whispering palms . . .

the river curves

into her bathing body

Let's get serious, she said. Tell me what is love and since you’ve started to express this emotion in poems, you should be having some inkling about it?

I recited one of my tanka to her:

I look down

unwilling to look up

for in his eyes I saw

something

which is not love

I did get serious and asked my daughter, if she had heard of self-love?

There is no other love in this mundane world except that, I strongly feel.

Oh mom, she said, hugging me, does that mean your love for me is out of self-love?

The all engrossing love of a mother for her new born is called vatsalya – the purest form of love that human beings are capable of . . . anyway that’s what our Hindu sacred texts tell us, I confessed.

But just think, other than a parents’ love for his/her newborn, is there anything man does in this world which doesn’t have a price tag or which is not a batter system?

Tell me is there anything beyond self-love?

flower market

a rising clash

of aromas

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