The day 12 poem prompt of the 2018 National Poetry Writing Month prompt challenges me to write a haibun, which is a prose/poem form that takes in the natural landscape. This one is supposed to be about the place where I live, to bring this area to life through a charming mix-and-match methodology of haibun. Read about haibun here if you care to.

I am not sure about the charming part. Haibun, and the included haiku or tanka are Japanese poetic forms hundreds of years old. I’m not that old, nor am I Japanese. But, I am an old American boomer-poet, and child of the sixties. It’s poetry. I write ditties. Ditties don’t have rules. What follows is my twist on haibun. (No disrespect to any oriental art from intended.)

Welcome Home…sort of

The rocky trail invites my curiosity as it gives me perspective into the central Texas biota detected by my five senses and absorbed into the lungs of my mind. Stubborn life forms which I admire more for hardiness and attitude than for beauty or comeliness. Bright green immature ears grow from dark-gray, near-dead, needle-covered cactus. Big old oaks mix with scrawny mesquite and scrubs-n-shrubs to shade the rough pathway.

Rain strips pollen
from the air
a deer looks at me

So much nature
look, dunna touch
hearing of voices

Life thrives in this arid environ that permits me, a feral foreign pest, to have a limited experience. Flora here is so much like the native human species; tough, resilient, rebellious. Then there are the wildflowers: the bluebonnets, the Indian paintbrush and blankets. Beautiful. For now.

(Bill Reynolds, 4/12/2018)

Look both ways to see it all. Enjoy the scene but mind the gaps.