Sunshine in the Cemetery

                                                                      Dark Matter is like the space                                                                                       between people                                                                                        -Tracy Smith "Life on Mars" 

This month is named for Mars, that bloodthristy Roman God of War and eponymous red planet, and this post is a tribute to Tracy Smith's "Life on Mars" the Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry in 2012.  Frank Tassone at dVerse, the Poet's Pub, has suggested we write a haibun in the spirit of Smith's extended elergy for her late father. 

She who taught me to set a table, make my bed, and say my prayers waits for spring with no complaint— the boys of summer—but another sore appeared on her ankle and she wonders aloud What will become of me? I’m still a child while she is here, when she is gone what will become of me?

Whirl of black wing through the trees. Watchful crows remember face. Red tulips match her dress and his bow tie. Easter finery, cemetery grass, soft and matted underfoot. Why not believe as Camus did that two can become reunited as one?

Vase of daffodils

Last a week when brought inside

Sunshine in a jar

The haibun form consists of one or two paragraphs of prose that evoke an experience followed by a haiku, nature based, that complements the prose.

Thanks Frank for the evocative prompt.

IMPERMANENCE

The women gather at the riverbank
Musician, hunter, poet, mother.
Far from the withering gaze of the preacher
They bare their breasts to the sun.             
Sacred herbs for the midwife—
Sweetgrass and yarrow, sage, and cedar.

They gather and gaze

At the image of their mothers
In the mirror of the river.

Like snails in an aquarium
loosened from their shells,

In the reel of the river
They bare their breasts to the sun.

 

Bird’s plaintive cry o’er

purple nestling on the walk

Flees in silent flight.

 

 

May is a time of transience, and Frank Tassone, Monday’s host at dVerse, asked us to face the inevitable passing of it all with a Haibun, a literary form that blends prose and haiku.  

Feeding On The Dead

 The fires took four houses down last night,

They’re miles away, we’re safe, you set me right
The darkling sky looks like a storm to me.
But still I watch the sky above our game.
You made a triple word score with a Z
and remind me where we are; it’ll never rain.

People have to have some place to stay—

desert rats without the sense to flee

and water is cheap pumped in from far away

to here where fires feed on the dead and leap the pass.

No looming thunderstorm those kites of black.

You remind me where we are; it’ll never rain.

The fires took four more houses down last night. 

 

 

The one-eyed bird sings

plaintive song from blackened stumps

on the clear-cut plain.

Today it's Haibun Monday at dVerse with a seasonal topic of fear. And over at Earthweal, a challenge approaching Samhein, clebrating that Day of the Dead. Let's!