Form Friday: Haibun
NovPad 2024
Popularized by 17th Century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho, the haibun features a prose poem followed by a haiku to capture a moment.
From Sewall’s Bridge
When you’re standing in the middle of a poem, it’s remarkably difficult to write a poem. Or to write anything. Beside the lack of pen or paper, there’s that pesky lack of perspective. Like the view from Sewall’s Bridge. No, not the view – the experience. No, not that either. It’s life in that moment – all of life slow-rushing in and flowing out from the middle of that bridge. York River wends its briny way back to open water just a few feet beneath my feet. I push up against the eastern rail as a pick-up snakes a narrow path between me and the old man casting a line west toward the setting sun. Maybe he’ll catch one of those golden glimmers sinking under the wake of a solitary skiff. Lining the lobster shed: a faded rainbow of puckered buoys
re-reading here, and now that last line is leaping at me. So good. Funny how perspective changes what we see, as the fisherman will not see that gleam from his vantage.