{pf: p7 hoping for a haibun}

Welcome to the last Poetry Friday Adventure for 2024!

Thank you so much for joining us for our 2024 Poetry Peeps Adventures. You have made our poetry year more fun and meaningful, and we thank you for taking part as we challenged and stretched our skill this year. Challenges for 2025 are forthcoming! Stay tuned for the announcement of the January challenge on January 15.

By the time you read this post, it will be well after Christmas, and on the way to the calendar (as opposed to Lunar) New Year. I hope that you have had a wonderful, restful, music-and-book filled time – with all the family and/or all the quiet you might desire. I hope that those of you who have lost friends and loved ones this year felt close to their memories and that those of you who have welcomed new family and loved ones enjoyed time with them. Happy Winter Holidays! Here’s to the invincible light that illuminates the darkness.

Did you know that the poet, Bashō, coined the word haibun? The form as it is today existed in Japan even before the seventeenth century when Bashō first brought it to the attention of the world. Mini lyric essays, sharing an array of sensory details, created a mood and highlighted a season through a poet’s observations, and then set the tone for haiku, which went even more deeply into the natural world. These aren’t really meant to be long poems, but to bring the reader deeper into the spirit of haiku, which Bashō felt was useful to create a sense of longing, empathy, or sadness. (Not a small order, that.)

The Poetry Sisters were quiet busy this month as so many of us were, so we mostly worked on our poems alone. Liz and I got together for our live chat, and found that we hadn’t really thought ahead to what our topics might be. We talked about what we’d been doing, and both of us agreed that we might settle on writing about the Solstice, since it had been the day before. That seemed a reasonable topic. What surprised us was how, when we came together to discuss and read aloud our poem drafts, we had fallen into a synchronicity of thought. Not only had we used similar topical beginnings (though I’d crossed mine out), we ended on eerily similar final lines. How did we do that, after only speaking to each other for about twelve minutes before working solo for twenty minutes?? We determined that the Universe has been speaking – loudly. Somehow, poetry tuned us in to the right frequency.

Here’s Liz’s poem – which I found to be stunning. And here’s the frequency wherein the rest of the Poetry Peeps came in – Laura’s poem is here. Mary Lee’s poem is here. Tricia’s poem is here. Jone’s poem is here. Michelle K – who is our Poetry Friday hostess today – adds both Hanukkah and a Haibun to the fun, at More Art 4 All. Thanks, Michelle! More Poetry Peeps may check in between now and New Year’s, so do check back for the full round-up.

While I was unaware of being particularly tuned-in to the Universe, I knew we had chosen the Haibun as a particularly short and low-rule poetic form that ALLEGEDLY would be easier to write. ALLEGEDLY. We think this every time we encounter a short form, and in all honesty, short forms are sometimes even harder to finagle. Haibun is a form which is meant to evoke mood and season, diminish the poet’s presence in the work, but avoid merely being a listing of what one sees in the natural world. It’s meant to make you FEEL something… All I could feel, however, was how dark it was, even though it was early afternoon. Some years more than others I struggle with the shades drawing down of the seasons – but this year, after November, especially, I have felt like the light has bled out of the world. Not to be overly dramatic – the world has been a dim and barren place before throughout history – but sometimes we’re wearier than other times. Sometimes, the grimness is a little harder to take. And I know I have so much to be thankful for! Because – among other things – every time the darkness comes, we’re reminded of the contrast of the light, are we not? If we never knew the shadow, we would never love the sun.

And with that, I realized that I had my whole prose bit, anyway.

The haiku – as I sat scribbling with a single candle lit – practically wrote itself.

AFTER NOVEMBER,
the autumn sky seems shoulder high, sheer rags of clouds stretched thin.
Like a breaker thrown, no matter that it’s 3PM, dark’s edge…falls. Sharp as a guillotine,
sudden as a cut-off scream. Darkness, and the moon is a pale coin for the ferryman,
as sky blue bleeds down black, and the longest night begins, burying the corpse of an endless year.

Scraped raw we stumble through the gloom, barking our shins, fumbling for a glimmer,
as a kind of heedless desperation steering our night-blind gaze. We strain towards… something.
Anything.
But, what if we’re looking in the wrong direction?
What if we are the dawn?

Light every candle
and breathing clouds of mist, rise
meet the dark singing

We have, some of us, settled into a trough. We are in a low place, as the light has ebbed, as the night is long, as the cold feels endless. Solutions, answers, and light seem in short supply. But – we can’t stay here. We won’t stay here. Every day, the light’s return comes closer. Every day, the dawning of the year comes nearer. Maybe we don’t have a plan yet. Maybe we feel – strongly – that we need one, but don’t know where to start. Even if we don’t move, we’ll come to the place where there’s another beginning. And another one. And another. I would rather meet the days ahead on my feet than be dragged into the stage lights, unprepared. I don’t know what I’m standing up to meet, but I’ll be on my feet – ready to move. And I know you will, too. So – take a breath. Tighten your shoelaces, and plant your feet. We’ve got things to do, and we’ve got this.

Happy New Year. You are well-loved.