Matthew Caretti

Up through Time, a Splash

The parking lot is empty. Or nearly so. This ancient pond a secluded refuge of sorts. Just one old pickup parked askew. All rust and faded stickers. Tires bald against the bluing crush of gravel. From here, a way through the needle spray of pines. Along a silent footpath rounding the late day shimmer.

humming orange
of his vest
the lone angler

He nods, this stranger, and offers a beer—cold sweat now pressed into my hand. Settling down beside him, I pull slowly into half-lotus. He in his camp chair, smiling a soft cast into twilight. Eyes closed, finger on his line. Catching only the evening breeze and the first burst of frog song.

vocal sac
between hiccups
the froth

Soon it will be dark and yet I resist further rustle or fuss. We have been here alone together nearly, it seems, forever. But I must go and so do step soundless into the gloaming beyond his smile and still unmoving line. Soon my own finger comes to rest on pen leaning into paper. I close my eyes. Recall fragments of poems about frogs and ponds. Leave a note under his warped wiper blade.

moonrise
the old bullfrog
sounds it

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About the Author

Matthew Caretti began publishing his poems in 2009, though his fascination with Eastern short-form genres began much earlier. In 2020, he won the Genjuan International Haibun Contest’s Cottage Prize for “Call to Prayer” and received Honorable Mention recognition for “The Car in the Petrol Station Lot” in the Haiku Society of America’s Haibun Contest.