Haibun – Poetry, Short Prose and Walking

Broadway

Those boxed rectangles with bland colors offer some differentiation but that’s not enough. The white is what’s important not what steps on it to stand out.

Unless those squares let white show through, there’s nothing they can do except to blandly block the view.

But then I heard and understood. It’s not those ghostly squares. They’re the victims. It’s that deathly white itself, the very stuff I thought was pure. I almost didn’t see it. Now I do, burying, as if it could, the light that would shine through.

     
            Empty restaurants
     Birds will nest in time for spring
          Water flows and falls

Linked to dVerse Haibun Monday. Kim Russell is hosting with the theme of Piet Mondrian’s ‘Broadway Boogie Woogie’.

New York City from the Empire State Building

Indigenous Behavior

The 40 degree weather didn’t stop locals and non-locals, all of us indigenous to this planet, from running, or cheering on the runners, in the Chicago Marathon.

Admittedly there is something odd about 45 thousand members of an indigenous species voluntarily running 26.2 miles and even keeping track – to the second – of records such as the 2:14.04 top time set by Kenyan’s Brigid Kosgei for women runners. I can imagine aliens from another planet, ready to invade, having second thoughts because of that, but if these marathons help keep out those non-indigenous species I’m all in favor of them.

The photo I took was from the very last mile at the very end of the race going up Michigan Avenue. The top winners had finished hours ago. If I were a runner and I got that far, which is questionable, that’s where I’d be. About midway under the Chinatown arch what made me smile was a sign that read, “Hurry up and finish, your mom’s freezing out here”.

Run past Chinatown
in windy Chicago weather
back home to Grant Park

Linked to Trent P. McDonald’s The Weekly Smile. Also linked to dVerse Haibun Monday where Frank J. Tassone hosts with the theme to “celebrate all things indigenous”.

Hints of Spring

When I can’t get off my butt, there’s nothing like a kick to do the trick.

I’m beginning to value pain. To reinforce that value I think of it as the whispering of angels calling me to pay attention. Of course, I could just as well think of it as a kick in the butt, but this is supposed to be a poem, and there is more to reality than meets the eye.

This is also supposed to be about spring, but all I hear about is winter. So. More snow? Or is it time for winter to get off its butt and go?

PAST WINTRY PAIN
COMES SPRING-BOLD RAIN
 WE START AGAIN

Linked to K’lee and Dale’s Cosmic Photo Challenge and to dVerse Haibun Monday. Merril is hosting with the theme of March Madness.

January, Upside Down

This January I hoped to see a tiny crescent Moon in the morning just before sunrise. I think such a Moon is upside down, but maybe it is right-side up as well. Regardless, the mornings this January when the opportunity arose were cloudy. The expected sliver of Moon did not appear.

While waiting to see if the clouds would clear I recalled an old couple. Toward the end of their lives they behaved like teenagers in love. They held each other close even in public. They smiled warmly at each other. They seemed upside down to some of us although we all wished we would have their right-side up love when we were their ages.

For many of us clouds get in the way modestly blocking reality. I’ve learned this January that all that is perhaps the way it is supposed to be. Clouds in morning sunlight also put on beautiful shows. Besides, it is easy to forgive all that cloudiness when I realize they also wanted a happy ending.

 
THERE'S VENUS, CLOUDS, AND
JUPITER. IT’S WINTER, BUT
OCEAN WAVES ARE WARM.

Linked to K’lee and Dale’s Cosmic Photo Challenge with the theme “upside-down” and to dVerse Haibun Monday where Kim is hosting with the theme of January. And to Debbie Roth’s Forgiving Fridays.

Right-side Up or Upside Down, It's Morning — Right side Up or Upside Down, It’s Morning

Waiting From a New Perspective

I’ve been to Gillson Park many times. It is on Lake Michigan and there is plenty of parking. It is a little far for me to bicycle, but it would not be impossible. What’s impossible is not what’s important. What’s important is that there is a park here at all and there is a beautiful lake that waits on it like a servant.

There's a haiku here
somewhere waiting for me
to try to find it.

Linked to K’lee and Dale’s Cosmic Photo Challenge with the theme “from an unusual angle”. Also linked to dVerse Haibun Monday where Imelda is hosting.

Circles of Change

Memory is a circle of love that’s not always pleasant. It allows us to experience the present so we can take action moving toward the open future. It offers a passionate place to stand. The present unties the circle giving us the opportunity to spiral that remembered past into a new direction while memory weaves it all back into another circle.

That probably makes no sense.

The painful changes I have experienced through my life have been to watch parents, and others, get sick, emotionally and physically, understanding and misunderstanding these things as caused by environmental, agricultural, medical or dietary mistakes I once thought of as progress. It’s not that it was all wrong. It just needed some kind of correction that didn’t make sense to me earlier. As we let the circle untie and spiral forward there is no reason not to trust that we will do our best to add what we can to make it, in spite of everything, more beautiful.

That probably also makes no sense, but it does to me, until it doesn’t, but that’s when I can look forward to the heartbeat opening the future once again.

HAPPY PUMPKIN ORANGE
AUTUMN CHANGES MAPLE RED
SPIRALS ROUND AND ROUND

Linked to K’lee and Dale’s Cosmic Photo Challenge with the theme circles. I am also linking to dVerse Haibun Monday where Merril D. Smith is hosting with the theme changes or transitions.

Photos: “Pumpkin Circles”, above, and “Pumpkin Spheres”, below.

One

On a morning walk I am like a bee in search of nectar knowing this richness hides behind color, knowing it could be anywhere and then seeing it, there, right there, in one flower with yellow petals and drops of dew. I put the phone close to it and take a picture trying to see the drops of dew on the leaves but who knows what the photo will show? It isn’t me looking anymore.

Or there it is, in that one tree, in the distance blessed with morning sunbeams, surrounded by the branches and trunk of a nearby tree and below by a soccer field, standing out as one among many trees right now. Even the mistiness of this morning singles this one tree out hiding all those in the background. Just one tree, right now, over there, and why do my eyes find it so beautiful?

YELLOW BLOOMS ATTRACT
LIKE GREEN THIS MISTY MORNING
SUMMER SAYS GOODBYE

Linked to dVerse Haibun Monday where qbit/Randall is hosting with the theme of one’s self en masse.

Photos: “Soccer Field in the Morning”, above, and “Each One”, below.

Morning

I wake to thunder and shivers of lightning through the window. The rhythmic sound of rain comes and goes. The sky surrenders with its tears.

Will I find the right words today? I only need to risk a few. Some come to me like soothing rain perhaps through the storm clouds of my dreams. I wonder, will they do?

Today, depending on how long the sky needs, the Sun may stay behind the clouds holding the sky in warm embrace forgiving the sky for all those doubts.

morning thunderstorm
rain weeps summer’s sun away
autumn starts to fall

Text: Linked to dVerse Haibun Monday. Mish is hosting with the theme of “morning”. I am also linking this to Debbie Roth’s Forgiving Fridays.

Tomorrow I will be hosting dVerse Poetics with the theme of frustration and heartbreak featuring Gerard Manley Hopkin’s poem “Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend” and Dionne Warwick singing the Bee Gee’s “Heartbreaker“.

Photos: “Early Morning”, above, “Morning Shadows and Reflections”, below.

News: My poem “Boundaries” appeared in the current issue of The Lyric.

Long Ago

My first job was in data processing. The night shift gave me the day to enjoy the city. I mounted magnetic tape onto drives as tall I was. It was a job that begged to be automated. That was long ago. Like Sisyphus, I can still see myself mounting those tapes only to take them down again.

My walk to work led past the Art Institute. I spent an hour each afternoon wandering through the exhibits. I can still see some of them.

One of the benefits of membership, at least in those days, long ago, in what I would even call the mysterious dark ages of my life, was the free coffee that the Institute offered in the afternoon. I became a regular around four in the afternoon with a dozen retirees who were always there and a few strangers who might wander in some afternoon and whom we would never see again. I can still taste that coffee.

Through daydreams blow the breeze of memory.
When shadows break I look and sometimes see.

Text: Linked to dVerse Haibun Monday. Jilly is hosted with the challenge to the traditional form.

Photos: “Blue and Green”, above, and “Red and Green”, below.

Faith

A tarot card reader told me I could predict the future, but I did not take advantage of my skill. She herself got many things right about me, or rather she got the details wrong, if one wanted to be technical about it, but the end results were all right on target, better than I expected.

That was long ago. It was the only time I ever had a reading done. I thought at the time I was skeptical enough, but I realize now that I believed every word she said. Today I am more skeptical of doctors tempting me with drugs than I am of tarot readers pushing what? Best wishes? Some good advice on what to be cautious about?

I looked for her when opportunity brought me back to that area to thank her and tell her that she was right about everything of value. I didn’t expect she would still be there, but I checked anyway. Her dark shop in the hotel lobby was replaced by a well-lit trinket merchant. No one knew what happened to her. So, instead of expressing my gratitude, I had to be satisfied with seeing a beautiful future for her through all the storms that might come to charm her life. It was basically the same future she predicted for me.

WHAT WILL COME OF US?
FLOWERS AREN’T REQUIRED TO ASK.
BLOOM, RECEIVE AND GIVE.

Text: Linked to dVerse Haibun Monday. Michelle (Mish) is hosting with the theme of “faith”.

Photos: “Morning Sands to Walk on”, above, and “The Way We Bloomed Last Year”, below.