Lorraine A Padden
the tenth muse
After her shift Mom drives straight home, pulling up just long enough for me to jump in the back. I heave my dance bag onto the seat, careful to avoid crushing her cap. I pass her a baggie of crackers.
triage
In breaks between adagio combinations I glance through the studio window into the waiting area. Among the jeans and cardigans her uniform seems to glow. Slipping her name badge into her purse, she takes out a paperback and absent-mindedly tucks the bookmark behind her ear.
a spare white
bobby pin
Note: The title is borrowed from a Shakespeare’s Sonnet 38.
About the Author
Lorraine A Padden is a Touchstone Award–winning poet whose honors also include prizes from Tricycle Magazine, the Haiku Society of America, the Tokutomi International Haiku Competition, and the National Endowment for the Arts, among others. Upwelling, her first collection of haiku and related short forms, was published by Red Moon Press in 2022. Find more at lorrainepadden.com.
The title does look softer in lowercase, which is interesting, as there are sentence constructions throughout, so I do like that arresting touch.
It’s all a lovely pace of prose, so readable, yet so much detail at the same time.
I love the “absent-mindedly tucks the bookmark behind her ear” and how you broke up the haiku, which demonstrates skillsets of writing that we can often overlook.
After the innocent “I pass her a baggie of crackers” we have a large space, then ‘triage’ which has become more and more of a commonly known term to so many visitors to A&E/ER.
Then another large white space, making it such a strong entity in its own right (white space & negative space power).
Then another innocent phrasing, though full of writing tension:
“she takes out a paperback and absent-mindedly tucks the bookmark behind her ear” followed by more potent white space, and:
a spare white
bobby pin
Which in turn, for me, flips back to the absent-mindedly tucking a bookmark behind her ear. Tiny touches of ‘craftship’ that power the haibun, invisibly yet so powerfully nonetheless.
Thank you for insightful comments, Alan!