Matthew Caretti

Reading The Dance Most of All at Sunset on the East Coast of Tanna Island, Vanuatu

They’ve asked me all day why I’m not married. Why I don’t have children. Lapse into awkward silence as they continue to ponder, I suppose, how this is possible. What it says about the type of man I might be.

        if the sea
        were a mirror
        rain shadow

I use this moment to slip away to my balcony. Open again Jack Gilbert’s collection. Turn to “The Spell Cast Over.” Answer the poet as I am often inclined to do—But I’ve seen my young heart. Had a too hard look and decided it was best to leave it behind.

        pacific rats
        from tree to tree
        the late sun

I hold within me a new heart of sorts. Not exactly new. Used but refurbished. Beating with renewed strength, a vitality drawn from a walk with old gods. Now only the occasional and inevitable rise in pace, some echo of the spell.

        black sand
        a careworn dugout
        sinks in twilight

In “Alyosha,” He longs to live married to slowness. I nod a silent assent. Move intentionally from my place on the balcony to the silent path northward. A group of boys flirt in their innocent ways with two sisters from the woven cyclone house set at the edge of the dark forest. We offer each of us a knowing smile.

        heaving moon
        a burden of light lifted
        from the sun

---

About the Author

Matthew Caretti has published two books of haibun, Harvesting Stones (2017, Snapshot Press eChapbook Award winner) and Africa, Buddha (2022, Red Moon Press), and a book of haiku, Ukulele Drift (2023, Red Moon Press). His haibun “Deep Water Port” earned a 2023 Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun. He lives and teaches high school English in Pago Pago, American Samoa.

---