Camping Haibun

Toes tight curled in shoes, arriving in a private park near the border of B.C. and Alberta, driving down the switchback lane down bluff, with a guard rail looking like a wriggly gum wrapper caught around the worst curves. At dusk, setting up camp, peg poles in by feel, fingers finding lilliputian cacti. Overcast night with no fallen net of city’s stars anywhere, the negative ions of the rushing river sent over a nervous energy, filling the limbs with motion. In the night white caps and thoughts rise and flatten black. Eventually hips rise from the small cacti that latched to sleeping bag, and feet follow sound. Before dawn, the trains running parallel to river, my lipline a low angle to where dawn will come, lying across the peninsula of shore stone, mind too heavy to turn, too bedsore of old thoughts to stay.

tide washed stones
palms leaned on for hours
pressed shinier

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