Diana Webb

Palimpsest

autographs
a flourish
smudged

She flicks through the program of the ballet performance all those years back. The one they’d shared.

a waft
of dimming print
waves of a fairytale

Craving solitude the prince sets out for the moonlit woods with his gift of a bow. But it’s he who’s struck through the heart as he encounters a beautiful woman. She tells him she’s forced at the hand of an evil enchanter into avian form by day.  So at dawn they must part.

At the turn of a page there’s a gramophone advertisement for His Master’s Voice.

black and white dog
intent
on dust

The vinyl 78 revolves through their fate as the music of acts two and three plays out in her head. Under pressure to find a wife, the prince is tricked by a dark-clad stunner to believe that she and his new found soulmate are one. He pledges himself.

fragments
of a shattered snow globe
the figurine lost

Encircled by trees, the discovered swan-girl forgives him. Both spell and fiend are destroyed by power of the heart. Although the lake consumes the lovers, the radiance of their union lingers.

opera glasses
fingerprints pressed
in mother-of-pearl

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About the Author

Diana Webb edits the Time Haiku journal and runs a haiku group in Leatherhead, Surrey, England, where she lives. Her recent books include Slipping Between and Fragile Horizons. She enjoys running haibun workshops.

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