Wednesday, February 14, 2024

HAIBUN


How Am I Doing? 

 

I pass the hours with cooking, cleaning, shopping. On most days. I read, write, paint. On Most days. I go out for coffee, for lunch or dinner. On Most days. I fight this sadness that comes with living without him. On most days. 

 

a friend shows kindness

and sympathy

and hears my problems;

suddenly, I shed the tears

I didn’t know I was holding


Contemporary Haibun Online Dec. 2023 

Thursday, January 25, 2024

Haiku


 morning companion
so much to say
the stream after rain
Treveni Haiku

Thursday, January 18, 2024

Tanka Prose


Table for One  

 

A downy woodpecker zooms in to the suet cage hanging on the holly bush outside my window. He lands, positions himself upside down and  pecks away. He leaves. Returns. Does this several times. It’s breakfast. A few hours later, he’s back. Lunch. Sometimes a quick nosh in mid-afternoon. He returns in the early evening for supper.

 

We are on the same schedule.

 

fifty-seven years

of eating together

from snacks to feasts

we shared a love­—

my cooking, his eating


Cattails   

Thursday, January 11, 2024

Haiku


 still afternoon
the sky, the pond
. . . the pond, the sky
Treveni

Wednesday, January 3, 2024

Haibun


TINSEL TOWN                                    


 

She is a devout Catholic, transplanted from a small town from somewhere in the mid-west to Los Angeles. Here is where she'll find excitement, glamour, stimulation. And… love.  

 

When I meet her, she is thirty-two years old. I am only eighteen, the youngest member of the church club. She isn't the only woman member over thirty, just the plainest, the quietest. She is the one who is most likely to remain forever unmarried. Forever a spinster. Forever an old maid.

 

After several months, I drop out of the club, but return a year later.

 

"We're chipping in for a bassinet for Irene's baby."

 

"Sure, I'll give," I say. "I didn't know she was married."

 

"She isn't."

 

 

tinsel town–

another glorious day                

before the rain

 

Cattails

Wednesday, December 27, 2023

Sunday, December 17, 2023

Haibun


THE FIRST SNOW


 

The Christmas season.  Our three young children are anticipating their first encounter with snow. On a narrow side street in Geneva in front of a small market we see a few pine trees.  None is over four feet or very full.  Still, they are real trees and fragrant.  We pick out the fullest and most evenly formed and carry it the four blocks to our apartment.  With no working elevator, my husband and I and the children hoist the tree up the five flights of stairs.  Next the ornaments.  Not the glittery glow of our usual ornaments which are in storage, but candy canes, paper snowflakes, paper chains and popcorn strings.  

 

watching my children

catch snow on their tongues

better than memories

 

Contemporary Haibun On-line 

Haiku

  weekend getaway coffee on the veranda with a gecko Sense  & Sensibility