I like the idea of haibun – a travelogue in prose poetry, punctuated with a 5 – 7 – 5 stanza at the end, like a poetic Columbo.  “Sorry ma’am – just one more thing.”  I feel like we make this kind of poetry everyday. We are always going somewhere, after all, even if it is just to the farmer’s market.  Afterwards, we probably find at least one little story to tell a friend – recalling the succulent aromas of lemony musk and grassy pepper from the bunches of cilantro and dill piled on the farmer’s table – but no corn just yet.

And here are the flowers of this haibun.  Not merely souvenirs, but ambassadors from each place where they grew:  the embankment, the truck garden, the lovely perennial border.  Cornflowers blue, solar rays of helianthus, Queen Anne’s lace-white, snapdragons as dark as the murkiest red wine, larkspur in the deep cobalt shadows. And the Queen Monarda with her wing-shaped petals in luminesce, lipstick red.  All the better to seduce butterflies, don’t ya know.

Don’t go anywhere. Stay and watch the green stems bow, moving with the wind.