Around Town (haibun)

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AROUND TOWN
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I hesitate.
Stepping sideways through the unfamiliar door, I shuffle between sagging, purpose-built shelves, moving slowly to give my eyes time to adjust.  A spill of cracked spines, piled one on top of the other bulging floor-to-ceiling marked by the occasional cock-eyed, hand-written sign, a promise of some kind of order.

shadows
curtain the alcove –
a beard coughs

sections run into each other; “LITERATURE”, “DO-IT-YOURSELF”,  “HISTORY”, “COOKING” is separated from  “SELF HELP” turning a corner

you will find “TASMANIA” along a wall down the hallway, past a sprawling jumble of random miscellany and comics.  There is nothing here for me, I head for the street.

“FANTASY”
by the disappearing staircase
I hesitate.

~~~

Haibun Today FEbruary 2009

Moonset 2008

published update – Just this Once (haibun)

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JUST THIS ONCE

stop talking at me—
understand the silence

I blow at it
as it runs across the keyboard
[a beautiful form] the size of a match
head with multiple legs and rounded back
translucent, bright

from the depths of its evolution
an involuntary reaction
pulling into itself

it folds up—
the tiny spider stays
very still as if under a rock
or a leaf, and I can’t see it, shining red

on the letter D
……………….. [for diversion]

you need not
shout—simply face me
when you speak

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(c) Gina

Haibun Today -September 2008

visitors (haibun)

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Visitors

There are two of them, males. They arrived in May, from who-knows- where, a little shabby without their summer finery. On weekends, we share toast and most evenings they roost, like giant-sized
chickens with enormous drumsticks, on the rooftop. They roam the street jumping onto my fence from the neighbours yard and into mine. Some mornings, very early you may be woken by their distinctive pitched call of ‘heeeeeeelp’ competing with the windchimes. Through slit blinds I see the silhouette of one against a grey-blue sky perched on top of the chimney.

coffee brewing
a peacock steps
through the fog

~~~

published LYNX June 2008

Beached (haibun)

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BEACHED

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Heat hangs astringent, pressing upon lichen shoulders.  Touched by
the occasional warm starfish an ancient patchy bird-shit monument
kneels in puddled sand beneath a sky stitched to the sea.

distant thunder
tall gum trees perfectly still
before the storm
i waited, as promised
and watched the tide ebb away

Ripples circle the rock where, in the tide’s cloud-crawl, tiny
crabs go on with their crabby lives and I wonder how words can
convey this sense without images to the eye.  On this slow,
tedious, amplified afternoon, I lean against the colossus baffled
by the clamour of these idiot gulls, ignorant in the art of give
and take, because its perfectly clear who should yield.

crushed
shell in a footprint
empty beach

~~~

published LYNX June 2008

around town (haibun)

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.

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~

around town (haibun)

I hesitate.  Stepping sideways through the unfamiliar door, I shuffle between sagging, purpose-built shelves, moving slowly to give my eyes time to adjust.  A spill of cracked spines, piled one on top of the other fill floor-to-ceiling shelves marked by the occasional cock-eyed, hand-written sign promising some kind of order.

shadows
curtain the alcove –
a beard coughs

Sections run into each other; “LITERATURE” and “DO-IT-YOURSELF” which separates “COOKING” from  “POETRY”.  “TASMANIA”  continues around a corner,  becoming random miscelleneous along a wall down the hallway.  Various unsorted manuscripts sprawl across a jumble of comics laid out on a table that brings me back to the doorway I stepped through a couple of hours ago.

“FANTASY”
by the disappearing staircase
I hesitate.

~~~

moonset may 2008

a helping hand (haibun)

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Laptop on my knees, I sit, red-socked feet against the heater, slurping from a mug with no handle, held between the palms of both hands. In an impossibly blue sky, the sun sits low, slanting light through slit blinds across the wall, striping the apples in the bowl.

reading –
in the absence of birds
windchimes

The cat pokes his head around the door, sniffs the air, then melts through the gap of shadow-door space. Padding across the floorboards he is momentarily diverted by a scent only he can discern. Satisfied, he licks his right paw, wipes his face and walks under my chair. …. I am distracted, lying on a blanket in a poppy field a world away, your face smiling at me, blocking out the sun…. The cat moves to my right, strains his neck to see past my knee, a tail twitch, and he jumps, sees the computer, does a hesitant, mid-air, half-turn flip, missing the mark.

Grappling air on the way down, a gloved paw slaps my laptop.

Surpising us both
‘Mozilla Help’ pops up.

~~~

SIMPLY HAIKU – December 2006