Poetry Corner: Regional Reading – Ocean Paradise

POETRY CORNER – The Regional Reading

– 10/04/17

Hosted by Kathabela Wilson

As you read these beautiful haiku many will have already made their way back across the globe from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Many embraces happened as poets move closer to one another in this special international community. Tiffany and Elizabeth will have read aloud at our performance a few of their beautiful haiku here printed, but you readers and viewers online have the most rich expression, the best of the Regional Reading! Thank you for encouraging this expression of the world haiku community. I know it has joined our hearts and minds with a “laying on of words” as Tiffany says here, and as our online “leaves inspire” as Elizabeth says “a scarf” that keeps the warmth of our poetic beings in the high country of Santa Fe New Mexico during Haiku North America, 2017.

This is the nineteenth and final posting in our series of Regional Reading haiku Poetry Corners featuring haiku poets that visited Santa Fe, New Mexico in September for Haiku North America 2017*.

~ Kathabela

The Bahamas Coast (Photo – Tiffany Austin).

Tiffany Austin

The Bahamas oft termed paradise holds “congruences” and “incongruences” of spectacular nature with its many islands and cays. In Nassau, down from an old settlement, the luxury hotels/condos for tourists and ex-pats. At fish fry on Arawak Cay, shot gun like restaurants selling conch salad or barbecue with potato salad while there is Junkanoo, not Carnival, celebrations rake n shaking down colonial tinted streets. And there is always the ocean, near everywhere.

day break—
two women after a swim
whisper

back to me—
god’s face in a boy
and water.

a laying on of words
inside
a mother praying for me

Tiffany Austin writes poetry as well as teaches in The Bahamas. Her poetry has appeared in African American Review, Callaloo, Obsidian, pluck!, Valley Voices, and Sycorax’s Daughters, a speculative literature anthology. Her photo essay “A South in Sound” (an attempt at haibun) was also recently published in TriQuarterly. She has received fellowships or grants from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Mississippi Arts Commission, Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, and Kimbilio Annual Retreat.

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A view of my garden looking out to the unseen ocean (Photo – Elizabeth Yahn Williams).

Elizabeth Yahn Williams

I love having lunch at the Jolly Roger which recently birthed four small egrets that hang out in several trees with the herons and sometimes I stay at the Rodeway Inn just to watch the train run above the breaking waves … so beautiful and peaceful!

morning coffee steams
train whistles above breaking waves
at Rodeway Inn

sea lions sun
egrets and herons soar
Oceanside Harbor

slick cruiser docks
as we gawk eating calamari
Jolly Roger

afternoon sun
gilds russet leaves, inspire
a scarf for HNA

Elizabeth Yahn Williams lives in North San Diego County, (where, with Bob Lundy, she has co-edited and designed eight award-winning volumes of SUMMATION: The Merging of Art and Poetry). Her poems reflect her home there, the atmosphere near the San Luis Rey River and the picturesque little harbor at Oceanside.

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*The Regional Reading was performed live at the conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in September, 2017, led by Kathabela Wilson. The dramatic presentation were accompanied by Rick Wilson on flutes of the various regions. Poets from Australia, India, Canada, United States, and many other regions presented.

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