Haibun
It was the summer of ripening peaches and my younger sister’s struggles with inevitability as green nubs blossomed into peaches and summer faded into waiting.
My second visit to the Chicago area was for my sister’s surgery. When she awoke it was simply a miracle. It’s difficult to formulate words for feelings of sadness and wonder why her and not me. The summer in me thinks of unfairness and fall well, is fall. Autumn can come any season even in the heat of summer. We breathe and wonder where time has wandered and why an apple falls from a tree. In early September we hiked Coyote Ridge. The sun still summer hot, burned. Cactus found pockets of shadow on shale. We took a break on a covered wrap around porch. The breeze was refreshing delight. We heard barks in the distance, coyotes were raiding the prairie dog town. Tired, my bones melted into the bench. The lion loped out from under me, stretched into the slope black tipped ears, black tipped tail, tawny, sleek. There was eternity …then he turned his head.
When sister ripens
sleek tawny uncertainty
pocket shadows stretch
eternity in a stare
summer of your lion fall
Improv 2009
