These photos were taken on one day in July 2013 at Lake Michigan. Bob and I had driven his motor home north, heading towards Ludington. I was the map captain, and I noticed a small park not too far north, between Ludington and Manistee. We followed the map and discovered a perfect little park. Set…
Category: haibun
dVerse — haibun –Basho
Friends and celebrated poets Li Po (Li Bai) and Tu Fu (Du Fu) lived in the seven-hundreds. They sipped wine together and toasted the moon in bamboo groves. Almost a thousand years later, Basho became a poet of his time. Basho published under different names, including one that meant “green peach” as a sign of…
dVerse — haibun — reflections on quatrain
“Terminal Wasteland?” tells about my relationship with a partner from 2006 – 2017. It began as two broken and lonely people desperately seeking warmth in what seemed at the time a very cold world. Each of us had heavy loads of baggage that we sort of just hurled into the corner and forgot about, so…
Spring Housekeeping
One of the house sliders is open to the air today. I walked out to the mailbox and once again looked at the fence post falling backward near the road, bluebird box attached. Another reminder to get this and the other three ready for their annual visitors. I came inside and found two screwdrivers; one…
dVerse — barns, moons, and baseballs
It takes 3.6 million jasmine blossoms to make one pound of jasmine essential oil. There are 9,600 drops of it in every pound. Dividing the number of jasmine blossoms by 9600 comes to 375 jasmine blossoms per drop of oil. When I woke up this morning and looked outside, I saw my barn had burnt…
dVerse — taboos — three accusations
“The Circus” by Albina Felski As the oldest daughter of a mixed family of full-, half-, and step- siblings totaling 7, myself included, I often was left responsible for care taking all of them while mother and stepfather drank at the bar until it closed. The first accusation came when they took me aside and…
dVerse — haibun — War Child
Some say that Mars was the son of Jupiter and Juno, but when Jupiter decided to “usurp the mother function” by giving birth to Minerva directly from his forehead, Juno needed a balancing response. She consulted the Goddess Flora; Flora obtained a magic flower by plucking it ritually, then impregnated Juno by touching her belly….
