Haibun: Time Travels Us

Fingers getting grey, going thru boxes in boxes, tucked in with vases were small albums of snapshots. Years slept undisturbed, imperturbable. Opening the plastic burgundy, I find we were children together, with joy that would make a pregnancy glow dim by comparison.

Baby fat still over forehead, how did we look so old to one another then? Film after film was a ping pong of each other’s image. Invisible veins could make radiators of us, enough that scent of cotton came off shoulders, chests and backs as if we were ironed by our own need.

Morning with a bleary weaaahh? was clamp-palm-over-mouth precious, adorably giggle-able. It’s a wonder we didn’t use film canisters to keep each bit of sleep in eyes, stash fallen eyelashes, and razor off archival slivers from banisters the loved one touched once.

The intimacy of watching the other sleep was biblical adoration by a lone Magi. It was just as if, for a few minutes, that person weren’t actually weren’t Jesus and Mama and the embodiment of Kama Sutra all wrapped up in one old soul’s juvenile body.

first photos
closed eyelid rapture
even saints sleep

other sleep poems at One Deep Breath and a Contemporary Haibun Online and RitaPita’s post on sleep

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4 Comments

  1. Hot Cross Haibuns

    Gary Snyder read a Haibun last night for the Ojai Poetry Festival. First I had come across the form. He said the prose part was the hardest – to get it right and, to my way of thinking, sort of “tee up” the haiku part appropriately. Fun form. Learn something new every day.

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