“Find beauty not only in the thing itself but in the pattern of the shadows, the light and dark which that thing provides.” ~ Junichiro Tanizaki
Betsy and I would escape our Mom roles and drive into town on a quest for the Bohemian life we longed for and could not find in suburbia’s well-decorated hell. We would sit in a funky bar near campus and drink flights of craft beer while college women dressed in knee socks and plaid Catholic school-girl uniforms brought us chocolate ale and a reminder of how young we were not. “What are you reading?” was her favorite question and we would discuss literature and poetry and longings, leaving me staring at the green pin-dot light on the smoke detector at 3:17 in the morning watching loblolly pine shadows wave and beckon from the window
And ask from my life
Did an ache meet me crossing
The lake one July
Was there a hot scream
Of a thousand longings
Enormous in their
Petty way?
© Jilly’s
Join us at dVerse for Haibuns and Shadows
I sleep best on those nights when we slip out of the garments of artificial light and secret our naked souls onto the upper deck filling our bodies with wine poured from the drinking gourd and placing Polaris at our backs trace the paths of the wanderers sometimes with a telescope to look at the bright drops of imagination that circle Jupiter where they say we may find life beneath the ice of Europa which always brings me back to Earth’s Cry and when yawn turns to yawn and all the wine is gone the game begins of cocooning between the chilly sheets without the rudeness of lights to break the spell and open our eyes to the reality of night fears.
The bright cry of earth
Wanderer in the night sky
She is of the dance
© Jilly’s Poem & Photo
Please join us at dVerse where we are writing in the Haibun form.
Our Haibun prompt is Shadows; forgive me if I wrote rather loosely on that topic. This is perhaps more about the lack of shadows or the implied shadows. It’s what flowed from these fingers today!