Margaret Chula & Terri L. French
After-image
A haibunku
end of the walk
returning the crow's feather
where I found it
Our new home has tall ceilings and many windows. We have no blinds or curtains to cover them. The house sits back from the road on a wooded lot. I feel closer to nature with everything open. Squirrels scamper across the deck. A hawk scouts for breakfast from his perch in the sweetgum. A walking stick clings to the door screen. The windowsills hold things I’ve found in the yard—a snail shell, a cicada carcass, acorns and stones. A neighbor told my husband it was rumored that treasure had been buried on our property years ago. Building excavation revealed no chest of jewels or gold coins. But, just this morning, I discovered a blue plastic bauble and a bit of silver foil on the doorstep.
I found it
when I stopped looking—
heart song
Song Ayu Ketut Muklin was my dance teacher when I lived in Bali in 1978. Every morning, she would show up at my pondok wearing a sarong and a flowery blouse, her gray hair coiled on top of her head. Inserting a cassette of gamelon music into her battered tape recorder, she would begin the lesson. Legong kraton is a classical Balinese dance with expressive gestures and intricate finger movements—like bending them backwards and fluttering them like hummingbird wings. Then there are sledets, where dancers shift their eyes to express emotion. I would stand behind Song Ayu mimicking her gestures and footwork, sliding my eyes from side to side. Neighborhood children gathered round to watch this tall, blonde thirty-year-old woman. They laughed and pointed. I laughed, too, and continued to move as gracefully as I could. After the lesson, Song Ayu and I would sit together on the pavilion floor chatting and drinking sweet tea. I paid her in rupiahs and kretek cigarettes. The scent of cloves lingered in the air long after she had gone.
limbs sway
back and forth back and forth
the darkening sky
The darkest sky in the U.S. can be seen over 400 sparsely populated acres in Portal, Arizona, known as Sky Village. As full-time RVers there’s been a time or two when we’ve overnighted in well-lit Walmart parking lots—but not tonight. Tonight we are surrounded by the Chiricahua mountains, the old stomping grounds for Apache leaders Cochise and Geronimo. Here the darkness is not feared but revered. We don’t dare to even turn on a flashlight as we walk the dog around the small campground before bed. A squadron of javelina is not too far in the distance. I smell their musky scent and hear their grunts and mutterings as they forage. The dog starts to get agitated, so my husband takes her back to the RV. I linger outside for a while, just standing still, my eyes and mouth opened wide in awe. The Milky Way seems to have been poured on this pitch black canvas. I haven’t seen it since I was a child, and never like this. The twinkling stars are so plentiful it’s difficult to make out the constellations. When my neck finally tells me it’s had enough of star-gazing, I turn my face to the ground. But, even after closing my eyes, the after-image of their celestial brilliance is still there.
insomnia
asking Siri
to turn on the lights
“Light-fingered” was never a word I’d use to describe myself. But, it turns out, I was. It began in London where I’d spent a summer as an exchange secretary through Brook Street Bureau in Boston. They found me housing with two English girls on Kensington Church Street and provided temp secretarial jobs in companies where I took dictation and typed up letters for businessmen. This was my first solo adventure. Everything was going well until near my departure date when I was told that my travel agency had gone out of business. I had no return ticket. That’s when I started shoplifting cans of soup—inexpensive soup, like tomato or chicken noodle, never asparagus or lobster bisque. It was easy to slip a can into my shoulder bag and walk out. This was survival, I told myself. When I eventually returned to my small town in Massachusetts, I found myself tempted to take an eyebrow pencil from Woolworth’s. A small indiscretion. And then some mascara. Nobody would notice, I told myself, until the store manager stopped me outside and asked me to open my bag. After a lecture about stealing and making me promise never to shoplift again, he released me. The next day, my younger sister, Deborah, came home in tears. “Everyone in school is saying that I got caught shoplifting at Woolworth’s. It’s not fair—I didn’t do it!”
swimming out to sea
to clear my head
undertow
Undertow is the name of the debut album from American rock band Tool. The album’s first song—a favorite of mine—is entitled “Sober.”
There’s a shadow just behind me
Shrouding every step I take
Making every promise empty
Pointing every finger at me...
That shadow stuck very close to me throughout the holidays this year as we attended cocktail parties and wine tastings to celebrate the season. Truth be told, it’s sought me from the womb, just lying in wait. You see, my father was an alcoholic and his father before him. Who knows how far back it went, maybe all the way to Adam, when Eve tempted him with fermented fruit. Addiction is the snake. It’s a smooth talker and a liar. Throughout the years I’ve narrowly managed to keep it at arm’s length.
Undertow was released April 6,1993, exactly three months before my youngest son was born. He is a recovering addict, 11 months sober, and I could not be more proud of him.
New Year's day
an affirmation stuffed
into an empty bottle
Bluebottle is what some botanists call me. Since I come from humble beginnings—growing as a weed in corn fields —I am also known as the cornflower. Also blueblob and gobblebuster. Such insane names humans have invented for us! But I do like the name “bachelor buttons.” In the old days, we were worn as a boutonniere by men looking for a lover. If our flower faded, so did their chances of finding love. So much reliance on our delicate powers. Butterflies and hummingbirds are drawn to us for our sweetness and striking blue flowers.
My kin have been harvested to sprinkle on ice cream and custards or their petals dried to make Lady Grey tea, sipped by royalty. Van Gogh memorialized us in his Wheatfield with Cornflowers painting.
Once a young girl with flaxen hair walked through the meadow where I live with my relatives. She hummed a tune as she picked their blossoms and began weaving them into a crown. I’ll never forget how beautiful she looked, like a princess. As for me, I’m content to sway in the wind throughout summer and fall, when I’ll fade on the stem where I was born.
my father named me
after his first girlfriend—
wild margaritas
Note on the form of haibunku:
My first haibunku, “The Stick That Strikes,” was published in Frogpond in 1994. This new form began with a haiku by the Japanese poet Koya. I used it as a springboard to write a short prose passage, ending with a haiku of my own. The editor of Frogpond asked me to name this form. I came up with “hai” for the first haiku, “bun” for the prose, and “ku’ for the final haiku—a kind of haiku sandwich. Rich Youmans saw “The Stick That Strikes” and proposed writing a linked haibun together, beginning with my haiku “watching the fish pond / fill up with shadows / a distant train” as a starting point. He responded with a prose passage and closed with a haiku of his own. I then used a word or phrase in the final line of his haiku to write a prose response and capped it with a haiku. We focused on the primary elements of renku—linking and shifting. Our exchanges were through letters sent across the country. These were pre-computer and e-mail days! Our fifteen links became a book titled Shadow Lines, with an introduction by Christopher Herold and artwork by Michael Hofmann. Shadow Lines received the Haiku Society of America’s 2000 Merit Book Award.
— Margaret Chula
About the Authors
Margaret Chula has been writing haiku, haibun, and tanka for over forty years. Her haibun memoir, Firefly Lanterns: Twelve Years in Kyoto, received a NYC 2022 Big Book Award in Multicultural Nonfiction. Her new haibun chapbook, Clothes to Go Out In, was released ib 2025. Maggie lives in Portland, Oregon, and enjoys hiking in the Columbia River Gorge.
Terri L. French is a poet/writer and retired massage therapist. After several years as full-time RVers, she and her husband, Ray, settled down in 2025 on a wooded lot with a little stream on an eclectically populated mountain in Huntsville, Alabama. Her books include kaleidoscope dream (Red Moon Press), which won an Honorable Mention in the 2025 Touchstone Awards.