Janet Ruth
Flammable
A dimly lit arc of big sky draws across the plains. Not even a distant mountain to break the seal of the horizon. In the east, a rift in winter clouds reveals the cold, hard flame of Venus. Shortgrass stretches across the gentle swell of hills. The embrace of blue grama and buffalo grasses is interrupted where bare trees claw at the air. From a seam in the prairie, branches clutch at the receding blanket of cinereous clouds to prevent it from blowing away.
Then the sun usurps the day. Sky retreats to bleached-out blue and prairie to tawny brown.
so small
beneath the furious sun
I am a cinder
About the Author
Janet Ruth is a New Mexico ornithologist whose writing focuses on her connections with nature. She’s had poems published in Wales Haiku Journal, Under the Bashō, cattails, Cold Moon Journal, and Drifting Sands. Her first book, Feathered Dreams: Celebrating Birds in Poems, Stories & Images (Mercury HeartLink, 2018), was a finalist for the 2018 NM/AZ Book Awards. redstartsandravens.com
Beautifully descriptive haibun, Janet. Having been fortunate enough to live in NM, I get your image of the rising furious sun usurping sky and turning one into a cinder.