Haibun ~ Deerfield Mile


There are the walkers with coffee. There are the plodding joggers and the sitting sunrise watchers. There are the hand-in-hand walkers and the couples who walk an arm’s length apart. There are walkers muffled up in hoodies and runners pumping their bare arms. And old ladies, in ones and twos, weaving and winding from kerb to kerb as if they might still be dancing in a 1950s ballroom with the one they loved.

And, of course, there are always the ‘let’s-all-spread-across-the-sidewalk-and-take-up-as-much-room-as-we-can’ walkers. And dog walkers. And a woman who must have splashed through the ocean’s shallows, standing one-legged at her open trunk wiping sand from her feet. And a man wandering the boardwalk with a phone in his hand, who could be waiting for someone. Or even for himself.

And here’s me, trying to remember to keep right not left but forgetting when I run back to the beach, and spit some water onto the rocks, which way the wind is blowing.


sunrise
all of us
in this
together



Comments

Jason Crane said…
I like this a lot, Lynne, both the content and the style in which it's presented. Would you consider this a haibun?
Lynne Rees said…
Thanks, Jason. Yes, I would, because of the relationship between the prose and the closing haiku-ish poem. Tbh though, I don't think it's the 'best' haiku and there's probably a better one that could make the whole piece stronger... but there's something to say for spontaneous writing that avoids over-editing in the first instance. And it felt like an authentic response at the time of writing.