Visitation Haibun

Kurdarius Keyes

Today, you barefoot the path to a place you’ve always known. You taste the ghosts of tea leaves as you 

head east through the glimmering meadow, hearing laughter echo in the empty fields. You mind the 

marigolds waving, the waves of grass tails shimmering; but you don’t smile. You’re all dressed up for a 

family gathering, iron pressed slacks on this Sunday morning. You wear the shirt your father used to 

douse in his smell-good, bringing his collar to your nose in between breaths. You used to sing to the birds 

on days like these, run with that girl named Daisy in the fields. Your mother loved her rosy aroma—her 

love for springtime gardens and freckled grin alike. 

You find the building you intend to see, wood sides abloom with butterfly weeds—the roof’s smiling 

mouth drinking sunlight. The front door hangs open for the wadded furniture to breathe. A house of 

screams, now an ecosystem of dust. You nudge a rock, thinking what it’d be like to kick down the walls, 

see the whole place collapse. 

There, on the porch, your grandfather’s rickety rocking chair eases back. You used to sit in it after he’d 

keep it warm some Saturday nights. You sit in it now, not wiping at the fresh pollen, not minding the webs 

and chipped wood. From here, you watch the pulsing of summer winds and flowers flaking in the 

distance.

The worst memories

may flicker on the best days.

Nature remembers.