Peggy Hale Bilbro
Holding Up the World
As a child I lived on a dirt poor Texas cotton farm. The yard wasn’t really a yard, but more a bare, hard patch of ground. I don’t even remember weeds growing on it. But I do remember the large nail that for some reason had been pounded into the ground in the middle of that patch of dirt with just the head sticking up. I was sure that if I could dig down to the tip of the nail, I would find that it was holding up the sun over China and I could look down past the sun and see another world where Chinese people went about their daily lives unaware of me peering down on them. I spent many hours digging at the hard ground around the nail, but never managed to unearth it. Maybe it was better that I not be disillusioned. I still half believe the idea.
falling
feet first
into the sky
About the Author
Peggy Hale Bilbro has her roots in West Texas, grew up in Colorado, and now lives in Alabama. She began writing poetry years ago amidst the agony and ecstasy of graduate studies at Vanderbilt University and has been writing haiku and tanka for over a decade. She enjoys the challenge of finding meaning in a concise form.
Almost Alice in Wonderland!
I guess it is though I hadn’t thought of that. It is a memory from my childhood that has stayed with me and perhaps explains some of my love of magical realism writing.
Some of my fondest memories of digging in the dirt were revived reading your haibun.