Traveling to Mombasa

I am travelling to Mombasa with maybe five hours of sleep over two days. Delays, delays, delays and not sure I really slept at all. The movies keep me entertained. The food is okay.

The gritty leg from Doha to Nairobi, I see the desert beneath me and the three small children traveling with their mother let out sounds like a mad cat. They cry and moan sometimes in an echo of the other and sometimes in unison. This cacophony lasts for the duration.

let out a howl

unpleasant in the pleasant

changing of seasons

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Newborn

My grandbaby held my right pointer finger while she was sleeping. Her little digits wrapped around and then she squeezed and she is only one week old and already trying to lift her head. She held my finger for at least an hour while I rocked her in the giraffe chair. I wanted her to wake up so we could play. I wanted to sing Winnie the Pooh to her and read her a story.

When you are so small it is hard to get your pajamas to fit right. They keep riding up under your chin and I keep pulling them down, trying to adjust the bootie footed legs of the pajamas. It is possible to protect your chin from any chafing of a poor fit. What will we do tomorrow when your pjs fit perfectly?

listen little heart

count each breath in this moment

sneeze burp hiccup smile

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dVerse prompt to write a haibun and use the word heart

Minnet

New Year’s Day was a birthday for my second born and a smorgasbord for the relatives. Pickled herring, cheeses and pressgurkin, gravlax, pate, pepparrot, Janssons frestelse, kuttbullar, sometimes lutefisk, bruna bonor, appelflask, oxrelader.

Akvavit poured in just the right amount. How we linked arms and shouted “skol”. I can still hear my mother-in-law’s voice, “That will warm the cockles of your heart.”



midwinter hoarfrost

crispy sharp on old flowers

cold stabs in the mind

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dVerse haibun prompt on New Year memory. Forgive my Swedish spelling.

The Fig Tree

In Sunday School I learned about the big red apple of original sin in the garden. How Adam and Eve ate thereof. Caste out. Ashamed. Hid from God. What I didn’t learn— it was really a fig. They ate a few. Clothed themselves in fig leaf. Hid from God. Caste out. Separated from God. How Jesus went to the fig tree for food and finding none, he said, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again!” Explanation mark. A curse that lifted a curse. And the tree withered and died.

Jesus new Adam

the sin of man forgiven

reunite with God

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NaPoWriMo Day 29 prompt on curses.

Sleeping In

I have forgotten what breakfast tastes like. Although it is known as the most important meal of the day, I sleep through it. No smells of bacon and coffee brewed. It is winter and I am asleep in my bed. Outside the plants do the same. They are not yet ready to be uncovered.

deep roots in soil

keep life suspended in time

waiting for new warmth

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dVerse prompt for a winter haibun

On the Death of Robert Bly

I wanted him to live to be one hundred even though his readings had stopped years ago. Who am I to judge how long a man should live? Or how his living, his writing, his teaching helped my life. I was just a woman in his workshop at Centrum learning as much as I could.

He would take his class on writing walks. One day on a beach hike, we stood together and watched a fish die in the sand. Another day, we sat with an old stump that had once held up something magnificent. We translated Francis Ponge, “the poet of things”, and looked deeply into an orange.

seasons come and go

left alone to find my way

sad hearing the rain

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dVerse prompt to write a haibun on something or someone to be thankful for

Zombies

Night of the Living Dead was a scary movie I saw when I was a teenager. It was even scarier driving past a cemetery on my way home that night. The plot line resembles Walking Dead— cannibalistic zombies walking around attacking and eating people. Walking Dead is in the eleventh and final season of guts flying and spilt brains and many ways to slow down, trap, and kill a zombie, not to mention the unraveling of society and its attempt at restructuring.

taking from the past

brings unimagined seasons

fuels a greater fear

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dVerse prompt on a fear that was experienced— my experience with zombies has only been in movies

My Kindergarten Class

Kindergarten (garden of children) was the garden where I bloomed.

I went down around Colonial Circle and two blocks east, past the school patrol at the corner and there was West Elementary School. The classroom was light and airy with large windows along two sides. A long child-sized table was lined up by the windows and little chairs where we could sit. There were no desks. (Desks were in the 1st grade.)

Miss Nelson led us in art and theatre. (Seems like I was always a star.) My self portrait hung on the wall and I sang “Where is pinkie…..” in a performance for the parents. Miss Nelson took us to the post office, a creamery, a train ride and the Bell Telephone Company. The phone company had an exhibit of the evolution of the telephone, right up to the phone where you could see the person you were talking to.

I didn’t get to go on the train. The day before, I slipped going up the brick stairs to my front door and cut open my lip. The teacher and my mom thought I would bleed on the train. No train ride, no Hollywood career, and I wouldn’t eat butter for fifteen years because we had shaken a pint of cream until it turned. I was sure it would taste sour.

experience base

creates spirit of learning

growth of the person

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Back to school in my memory with a dVerse prompt on school.

Solstice in the Garden

I am drawn to the garden, to rake, shovel and hoe until dusk, on the longest daylight of the year. There is so much to do. The blue wheelbarrow is filled with mulch and rolls back and forth delivering its load. Weeds are pulled and branches pruned. The garden blooms in the solstice sun and I must strive to get a year’s work done until another one.

weeds come and go

get the seeds before they grow

temporary fix

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dVerse prompt for solstice haibun

Where I Am

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I am traveling through the Ozarks as I have a number of times, same highway, same destination. This time is different. The dogwood trees are in bloom, their flowers making thickets of white in a low canopy among tall oaks.

Where I am, surrounded by Ozark Mountains, the sun is setting and now the quiet water of the Lake of the Ozarks reflects the moon.

Spring in the mountains

flowers of many colors

open up to me

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dVerse prompt for a haibun in a state of now