Janice Doppler

And yet…

I follow a forest trail to a salt marsh where the incoming tide floods my path. I stand as close to the water as I can, creep backward as the tide rises in order to keep my shoes dry. I wish I could walk into the water. Better still, I wish I could float in it. Would being in the water blur the boundary between solid me and the marsh? Is a solid in water more connected to nature than a solid in air? Next to my feet, a crab scuttles sideways. I don’t define the crab as ‘not marsh’ even though it is as solid as I am. We both are experiencing the marsh and it is experiencing us. We all have solid parts, liquid parts, gaseous parts. Marsh plants need carbon dioxide. Crab and I require oxygen. Does breathing the same gas blur our boundaries? Does anything?

sulfury air. . .
on a spider web  
fog droplets 

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About the Author

Janice Doppler is a retired school teacher and administrator living at the edge of a Massachusetts forest. She placed second in the Porad Haiku Award in 2021 and 2022.  If she isn’t doing tai chi, watching or carving a bird, or writing poetry, she is studying Chinese philosophy or eating chocolate. Her debut collection of haiku and haibun is Stardust.

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