We communicated in images. Flickering moments on dueling monitors. Shoes on cobbled pavement. Clothes rustle in the wind. Wind? We both understand this thing, wind. The colors are suddenly blinding. I can’t even name them. The view of open parkland and a blue pond widens to almost 360 degrees. My stomach drops as the ground falls away, earth tumbling into a pit of sky, images bleeding off the monitors now. We’re flying again. It’s all she thinks about, the only thing she’ll show. I rip the cables from my temples. She flaps them from her wings. We stare at one another across the sterile distance of the research lab. Going nowhere. Again. A white feather floats on the air-conditioned current. We’re as alien and far apart as ever. Three feet away yet separated by species and the awkwardness of the now-severed connection with its illusion of understanding and love. Can she feel it too? She doesn’t blink, her avian eyes as incomprehensible as the machines humming in this lab. I glance at the security cameras and lean in. Please, I whisper, please. Don’t make me leave. I’ll show you everything. Outside, I hear engines and the wind of ten thousand wings beginning to flap.
A flight of egrets
glides toward the setting sun—
the moon rises.
—
This is for Big Tent Poetry’s challenge to write a haibun about travel and an encounter with an imaginary creature. I love haibun, though my approach has been intentionally nontraditional. I’d like to learn more, but I also like the notion of feeling my way into something new and playing with it a little bit like the way I’ll fiddle with a new instrument before attempting to learn how to play it.
I suppose this is why my haibun tend to read more like prose poems. Most of them actually start with the haiku, which tend to be pretty straightforward and traditional. I then write a prose poem piece that goes in a completely different direction. I often think of the prose piece as fictional process notes.
Sometimes I think I might just revise the haiku out completely and let the prose stand alone, but for now I like the way the haiku contrasts with the prose and grounds the charge, bringing things back to Earth. This Earth anyway.
James Brush is a teacher and writer who lives in Austin, TX. He tries to get outside as much as possible.
James
A beautiful haibun.
I love the imagery.
Pamela
Thanks, Pamela.
Superb imagery – it makes flight feel like reality. I like the haiku and think it adds to the prose but since I’m only capable of saying I like it or not, you can edit as you choose! 🙂
Thanks, Tumblewords. I think I’ll leave it for the time being. Glad you liked it.
“The colors are suddenly blinding. I can’t even name them.” As they would be, I think. This is the first sci-fi haibun I’ve ever read, but it really works!
Thanks, Dave. I spend a lot of time wondering what the world would like from the eyes of different creatures and figuring that in some cases it would blow my mind.
I’m getting more and more interested in sci-fi/futuristic settings for poems. I don’t see a lot of it out there and pushes me. Glad you liked it.
“Going nowhere. Again.” A sad realisation of the virtual trip but so consuming while it lasted! The haiku is lovely.
Thanks, Derrick2!
A very different kind of trip, indeed. I enjoyed reading it, and I think, too, that the haiku adds to the whole.
Thanks, Mr. Walker. I appreciate your comment.
Curious and intriguing, but then I am finding that with many of the haibun I have been reading. Still familiarizing myself and your piece seemed to be saying a very similar thing. There, connected, then gone again. Thanks for this one,
Elizabeth
Thank you, Elizabeth. Haibun is a wonderful form. There seems to be so much one can do it willing to experiment a little.
I was thinking “rhesus monkey” until I got to the wings. love the rush, the feeling of flight in the prose. favorite line: We both understand this thing, wind. and perfect touch, drawing birds into the haiku. it does ground the whole piece.
I think I share your feelings on the haibun — don’t think I understand the point of the combination completely. I feel like the prose and the haiku can/should stand alone, too. I guess it depends on what effect you’re going for.
I like the idea of them being able to stand alone but also that each can spin the other a little, change directions when taken as a whole.
well done…enjoyed the read and thanks for sharing your words
Thanks, Wayne.