Winter’s Edge

Seedlings turn their faces, follow the sun even when it hides from them like a mother playing peek-a-boo.  It seems the forecast is accurate. Everything holds its breath listening to the broken silence.

Spring – rumble of thunder
smell of damp earth, wet asphalt
sidewalks polka-dot

Welcome the disgruntled weather, imagine tiny roots tracing downward routes,  vision a world where misplaced markers are finally found, mica glinting like milled stardust.  Pause.  Praise the protective path keepers, the way ants move the ground one grain at a time, the gurgle of the brook soon to breech its banks, the migrating birds following invisible lines.  The map is full of what has been ignored, unmarked spaces where tiny dragons with delicate wings guard their gold and jewels and even demented demons fear to prowl.  What is sought resides in these interstices.

I am a spider
I fly on gossamer threads
the abyss stunned

Because I just discovered this form, haibun, and because I haven’t managed to read a lot of examples, and because everything I read on line that describes it is slightly differently (shades of the prose poem!), I decided that I will call this Haibun and if someone can show me how it is not, I will take that under consideration.

One set of guidelines says everything is written in first person or third person.  Another says the personal is not evident as in take the “I” out of the poem.  So I compromised.  I have ordered some books that purport to have haibun in them.  I shall report back after I’ve had an opportunity to play with this more.