Joshua St. Claire
Haibun on John Ashbery’s Haibun 5
I suppose I am not the first person to say that the sea is the clouds is the sea is the clouds, but it’s not as if we can go anywhere else and not like I have the ibis’ permission to start codifying words out of my glossolalia. As if I need it or would seek it. So, I’ll say it again. The sea is the clouds are the clouds are the sea. At any rate, since it really was Peacock in the Conservatory with the Rope, it can also be celadon and cyan in sine waves to any number of horizons in superposition with (and without) each other. In any case, the indigo hour descends on us all. Yes, I said it—I N D I G O. I’m still a believer in the eye in Roy G. Biv. Say what you wilt about the glass falling all afternoon all afternoon. Our friend, John, will always be Jacques—pronounced “Jakweez”—from here to the last asymptote disappearing in the stratocumulus clouds that are both above and below the horizon. The key idea is that order comes out of the waves in the west—the salt waves, the light waves, and hand waves—and not the other way around—but also not not the other way around. Despite it all, while the tea is brewing, the saw palms are sawing and the sago palms are sagoing. Dagmar looks up at us and says, “we’re in for a blow.”
always in the last place you look lightning whelk
About the Author
Joshua St. Claire is an accountant who works as a finance executive in rural Pennsylvania. His work has been published in several journals, including contemporary haibun online, Mayfly, The Heron’s Nest, and hedgerow.