Marjorie Buettner & Margaret Dornaus

Kintsukuroi

This winter solstice I feel the dark encroaching, growling like a wild animal at my door. I want to reach out, but time and space will not allow it. What is that healing balm which repairs those broken fissures in life? That golden resin the Japanese use to mend the shattered, making fragile pieces whole again, strong again?

dreamwork …
retracing the outline
of your heart-in-hand

For a moment you seem as frightened as I am, thinking that your efforts to catch and release the hummingbird that flew into our home have failed. I can’t feel a heartbeat, you cry as you move toward our front porch, your cupped hands trembling as I hold the screen door open, not knowing what will follow.

last length of light—
a bird’s extended note
through darkness

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About the Authors

Marjorie Buettner has two books of poetry published by Red Dragonfly Press: Seeing it Now (Haiku and Tanka) and Some Measure of Existence (haibun) which won the Haiku Society of America book award. She lives in Chisago City, Minnesota.

Margaret Dornaus’ poetry appears in numerous journals and anthologies. Her first book, Prayer for the Dead: Collected Haibun & Tanka Prose (Singing Moon Press, 2016), tied for second place in the 2017 Haiku Society of America’s Mildred Kanterman Book Awards.

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