Haibun

January 2015

Haibun

Prejudice

Alexander Jankiewicz

I'm eating beef masala for the first time ever, having ordered it as takeout. After my first

forkful, I notice what appears to be a zillion tiny bay leaves mixed in. Remembering my mother's voice telling me not to eat bay leaves, I begin to move them one by one to the side of my plate. Her voice becomes my own as I pick out all evidence of leaves. The next day, while having the leftover beef masala for lunch, I again remove the leaves. After a couple of minutes, I have an epiphany and Google "beef masala" in order to find out what it really is. I discover that the bay leaves thrown away weren't bay leaves at all. They were curry leaves. I continue reading about how good curry leaves are and learn that they aren't bad to eat. I tell this to my mother's voice, but there's no reply. It's then that I realize how enlightening a plate of beef masala can be.

a fledgling

leaving its nest--

trial run

A Single Leaf

Bruce Ross

It is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement of the practicing or non-practicing Jew. The practicing Jew prays to be included in the Book of Life for the coming year and repeats a long list of offences that may have been committed, striking their heart with each possible offence. In the principal text of Jewish mysticism, "Zohar," the entry for the Day of Atonement states that "all judgments are bathed in light and judgment is not effected." So, presumably, everyone will be included in the Book of Life.

Yom Kippur

a single leaf comes down

in stages

Milky Way

Yesha Shah

Exhilarating it is to be under the sky, amid this exuberant crowd. An exodus of runners gush out at gun shot, crackers burst and sparkle the night skies. Night half-marathon. My city is on the streets. A few thousand run with their bibs on. A double loop of ten odd kilometer is lit up. Live bands, flags waving, trumpets and shouts of glee. It is a carnival atmosphere. People from all walks of life run with me, as my steps roll on, one after the other. As I run, the pain, the sweat, melt my mediocrity away. Headphones belting out peppy songs, I run past those young smiling volunteers, offering water, ice packs, sprays and electrolytes.

cotton candy clouds—

the sailboats drifting to

my childhood

Zig zagging my way through the early strollers, I reach the point where my family and friends wave and shout out to me. One look and I forget my cramps, injured toe nails and that knot in the stomach. On the fly over, the professional runners flow past me like water drops on a slope. The sirens wail and marshals with neon rods escort them as we amateurs sideline to clear their route. I limp the last mile and sprint across the final sensor- foot with the chip first.

all my desires and

much more—

shooting stars

Wafting Strands

He checks his face in the full mirror after rubbing open his sleepy eyes. I am summoned loudly and immediately. There is a stray eyelash on his chubby cheeks and I carefully pick it up from there and place it on his rolled fist. He squeezes his eyes shut, so tight that there are crinkles on his eye lids and around. Then he blows with all the wind of his lungs. That grin, so broad that it reduces his eyes to mere slits, tells me what he has wished for. I smile and carry on with my chores. The day God decides to grant all those wishes it could be a tad difficult for me to arrange the parking for all those”real Red Mercedes”.

floating dandelions-

I hang on to the wisps

of my dream

Submergence

There is a snow storm raging atop the hill peaks. Within a few hours all the greens and browns are carpeted by a cottony white. We, who live by the sea, are mesmerized. Then the sun rains its golden radiance and the thawing hills come alive with sprightly little streams. These bounce downhill, rock by rock, forming frothing rivulets which finally merge into a torrential river. The river becomes the lifeline of vast expanse of human settlements turning from a sparkling clear to all shades of brown and grey. It finally surrenders itself into the salinity of the turquoise ocean. At this point of communion we live. The snow transforming itself came to us each day, just this once we went to the snow.

moon tide-

do the same waves crash

opposite shores

Eddie's Magic Beans

Tricia Knoll

It’s been forty years since I met my neighbor, Eddie Carpenter — I’m still not as old as he was then. Eddie used to watch me run around his corner, even vastly pregnant, and tease me about bad knees. I hated his cigar smoke, but admired the black wrought-iron bench near the blue hydrangea where he sat to smoke on a hot summer day at dusk. I liked the story he told about how as a young kid he climbed up the hill near our homes and picked watercress for his family’s salads because they were poor. Now that hill is full of one- hundred-year-old craftsman-style homes that sell in high triple figures.

I tried to like Tinka, his twenty-two year old white Scotty dog that was blind, deaf, smelled bad, and didn’t have much hair. Eddie didn’t walk Tinka; he stood beside her to keep her from falling into the street.

His wife died years before I met him but he always planted black and purple beans he called his wife’s magic beans — and taught all the children on the block to harvest young, wet beans in August when the beans were pink and blue.

One day Tinka died. Eddie took to sitting more. Then he shot his brains out in the bathtub.

orange trumpet vines

smother the white picket fence

around the house for sale