tree

We Write Poems this week asked us to suggest a prompt, write a poem to that prompt... and then share both. I selected one of my favorite forms to read so that I could learn to write more of these. This is my second haibun ever.

Poem prompt:  Have some high fun with haibun! Haibun is a written composition that combines prose with haiku. Its range is broad. The prose is usually very descriptive and can describe a journey, landscape, diary-entry, special moment, short story, biography, etc. The haiku that follows the prose is related in some way to the content, whether direct or oblique, and often it boils down a theme or an emotion from the prose. I like this form very much because it can be narrow or broad, intensely personal or intentionally surreal and dreamlike, clear and straightforward or meandering. The haiku at the end seems to be both a punctuation mark of sorts as well as expansive thought…

tree

From the moment she stepped back from the skinny, bending-sideways pin oak nineteen years ago, she felt a sense of protectiveness over the tree, as if from beside it or beneath it, or even from inside the house looking at it through the glass, she could send it her love and protection. She remembers the big blow down three years later, in the middle of July, when winds had rendered it nearly horizontal. Lear-like she ran from the house in her bathrobe through the gusting, pelting rain, and the thunder and the lightning, to pull the thin trunk vertical and re-stake the ropes. She patted the soil and said a prayer through her tears, please survive this, tree. She remembers the summer when the tree was large enough to sit under in a reclining lawn chair, with a book and the breeze, long branches finally providing a large circle of shade.  Another day, a hawk dove into the leafy fullness and snatched a baby bird from its nest, leaving the mother bird to cry out the rest of that afternoon.  Other than a few events, this tree is mostly a steady presence and a symbol of strength and grace. Through every season, sleet, hail, and snow, and through every ray of warm, golden sunshine, its leaves cycle. From feathery buds of fresh green in May to crisp-strong browns of December, not dropping its leaves until the spring. Its colors range from light green to dark, from mottled red and orange to bright red to brown, and then back again. Day to day, its changes are nearly imperceptible. With equanimity, it stands through each cycle of the seasons.

the oak

has a life of its own now

yet it keeps her here

Copyright © 2011 Nan P.






* This is still a draft. The prose section is longer than I would like it to be, and after one paring down of about 200 words already, I need more time to decide where to trim.

**Just after I posted this, I read Margo Roby's blog, and laughed to find that yesterday she posted a poetry prompt with a brilliant explanation of haibun. Just to prove that kizmet is alive and well, please visit her post for a great explanation that discusses the importance of the elliptical in haibun.