As I work the foam brush in spirals over the left front fender, I am tender and fairly crow and glow, going over how the ratio of sidepanel grime to time free to coins available are a perfect match. Time clicks down and I add another dollar.

As I scrub the right mirror, the water and clock stops. Eyes freeze.

blowing time
with bubble speed
who can vanish

Nothing for it but to leave. I have no coinage to scrimmage out from under the seats.

I put it in reverse, the windshield wipers clearing off a spot so I can see, acutely conscious of the bunched brow look from the unshaven burly beariness of the f10 driver in the next wash bay.

The body covered with suds, running in soapy streams, I park by the self-service auto vacuums, behind the green-streaked haired woman with the splooge of fat over every side of her jeans, her carefully pre-spiced heavy-metal T-shirt, her meticulous care to clean the groove around the door that must be vibrating with the roar of Led Zepplin.

breathing comes
with instructions
from within

If I drive at highway speed could I blow dry? If I catch a weather forecast, could I storm chase a storm front for a rinse? A bank to withdraw $5? Dripping all the way is still cleaner than a horse parade. The soap dries without shovels and shovellers. I decide to phone a friend who is minutes away.

a spray hose
spritzes better
with 2 gigglers

—
More haibun at One Deep Breath

—

I’ve read only a couple dozen haibun. Contemporary Haibun Online (CHO) gives criteria and examples and week 23 of One deep breath gives the challenge to write one.

CHO says it should be direct, concrete, have economical imagery, be infused with life and energy, lighthanded, playful with unexpected turns showing how the haiku came to be, such as Adelaide Shaw does.

Paris Parfait in her haibun of immediacy and concreteness, also afterwards quotes Bruce Ross, “If a haiku is an insight into a moment of experience, a haibun is the story or narrative of how one came to have that experience.”

something that is and might become more.

a wingnut tightening the already taut unlessoned unlistening
bright as a jaydaw’s eye in sun, hunch of spine might kink that way
caw call out, a sharpness raps, what, not clouds, azure brittle
density of lead crystal. off-note chime will do as a focus.
exhale the air held too long, piano key the fingers unblue,
forgot that moving will not happen without my will. shoulders
gyrate alone in a room, topsy world, elbows center of gravity
hobbles almost topples the two dreidels at each tabletop of my sides
in ball joint that fallen rolling bowl sound, nothing broken,
just check for hairline fractures, most too small, only future sees them.
kiss the tectonic wonder that may open in heat, the gestures
lift like sections of nectarines into part where there was whole
make yourself into a homemade bow of green wood pulled into tension
no arrow to hand so knife-saw string, spring back straight from weapon to graft.
open window to wait for the freshness of my blossom
poke me in a tree and I’ll bear fruit while you are busy becoming
quickly miter me to fill with someone else’s sap
rising through my low pressured cells before they flake inert.
shrapnel deciduous caked in ice springs back, anchor of trunk, drunk
take this water, we toast each other with a cutting from the sea, take it,
up into the thirsty sapwood that has no tongue to reach with.
volleys are a tiny scale now, cell to cell, ciphers siphon
writing on the forest face is: pax, root in place
xylem has no interest in conflict conflab, harps, violins and violence
zithers wither, a waste of thrumming living wood that is and is.