Category Archives: haibun
Haibun: Simple Pleasures
As a humble person, I fill my mornings with simple pleasures: writing haiku on clean white paper; straightening bent nails with a hammer; watching a sparrow build a new nest; or touching—gingerly—cactus needles. Evenings, I enjoy watching the current swirl where the river bends on its way to Mexico. I need no more medicines for my soul than these.
Deepening summer—
I long to wash the field dust
from my hands and face.
Haibun: Pandemic
Last year was hard—it was brutal!—as the world endured the Covid-19 pandemic. Here a mother died, there a father, and somewhere else a whole family. Some of us lost our homes, because we couldn’t work. Some of us ended up sleeping under bridges, or in fields, or in other out-of-the-way places. We were desolate. We couldn’t reach out to each other for a hug or handshake because we were in lockdown, afraid for our lives. Nothing seemed to help. And then came harbingers of hope, bearing strange names: Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca—vaccines to vanquish the virus! We offered our arms for a jab, and started to look beyond our nightmare, daring to hope that our world might someday be normal again.
Hidden mountain stream—
see, a doe and her fawn come
for the day’s first drink!
Haibun: Braiding Stories
Among the flowers and grasses, tiny yellow-and-brown things with wings land and take off, take off and land. Should I be worried that I do not know their names? I lift one of the things from a flower stained with its excrement—so small to have made such a big mess! Looking at this nameless thing strips me of all notions of superiority. I know that the day is coming when my own stains will be concealed by the undertaker’s art. But that day can wait. I still have stories to braid.
A woman sleeping
on a green park bench wakes up,
stretching and yawning.
Haibun: True Tale
Every tale I tell is true, although they may not have happened exactly the way I tell them. I embellish a detail here to emphasize a point. I subtract a detail there so it doesn’t detract from the narrative. I once held an old tabby cat until she died, feeling the blood rise and fall in her veins, and the faint purr of gratitude in her throat. No one wants to die alone, not even a cat. After her death I walked along the beach and picked up a shell. Everyone knows you can hear the ocean in a seashell. I heard my cat. She seemed to be whispering to me as she often did at midnight when she lay beside me in bed. “One day the current will carry you to me forever. Until then, I will speak to you as the wind or the waves. Listen.”
My first memories
burned to ashes long ago,
yet I still sift them.
Haibun: Some Wild Thing
Some wild thing roves outside my door. It always comes at twilight. It moves stealthily among the shadows, zigzagging, never in a straight line. It is so swift—like a meteor’s flash or the whirling rings of Saturn—that I barely catch a glimpse of it. But I know it’s there—a constant presence as night comes on. Does it mean to harm me or to help me? I’m not sure, so in order to sleep I check the door locks and chains once more.
The Book of Bad Luck—
why do I keep reading it?
I know how it ends.
Magical Mystical Teacher 