Margaret Chula

At Home on the Playa

Summer Lake, Oregon

At dawn, I open the curtains to watch the sun come up over the playa. I have always wanted a view like this to begin my day—the flat floor of a desert basin, silent, placid, still holding some of the night. Later I walk on this hardened mud, cracked by the sun, a jigsaw of earth with two-inch-deep fissures. Each step, a puff of dust on my black pants and hiking boots. Each step a different heft and sink as I follow in the tracks of coyote, rabbit, and bear. I move cautiously through tall dry grasses and thick underbrush that shelter snakes, then pass through sagebrush with its mustard-hued flowers. Closer to the pond by my cottage, clusters of bunch grass, the color of my hair. I lie down in them like a resting deer.

glide of a harrier
across the sky
its horizontal hunt

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About the Author

Margaret Chula has been writing haiku, haibun, and tanka for over forty years. One Leaf Detaches (haiku) was awarded a Touchstone Distinguished Book Award in 2019. Her new haibun memoir, Firefly Lanterns: Twelve Years in Kyoto, is forthcoming later this year. See more of her work at www.margaretchula.com.