Musical Boulders

creek stones
each with its own ping
hidden denizens


Playing the creek boulders again, my favorite instrument and one that I do uncommonly well--unlike traditional musical instruments. (Yes, I fail even at the simple kazoo.) This is Clear Creek at Cedar Bluffs, a particularly beautiful spot this time of year.

Here's what Aimee Nezhukumatathil had to say about haibun, our recent topic.

"Haibun combines a prose poem with a haiku. The haiku usually ends the poem as a sort of whispery and insightful postscript to the prose of the beginning of the poem. Another way of looking at the form is thinking of haibun as highly focused testimony or recollection of a journey composed of a prose poem and ending with a meaningful murmur of sorts: a haiku. The result is a very elegant block of text with the haiku serving as a tiny bowl or stand for the prose poem. A whole series of them in a manuscript look like neat little signs or flags—a visual delight.”

And when speaking about Basho's travel haibun, she particularly liked the haiku which closed each section. She described them this way: "They remind me of a bell tolling, a sound that carries the themes of the passage further. A gong reverberating long after being struck."

Or like my musical stones that echo your passage as you leap from one to the next.