Kat Lehmann
Describing the Air to a Trout
There’s more mayflies than you know. In the spring, berry fruits fill the breeze with a red euphoria. The scent of sunrises. Pieces of New Zealand and Canada mix into it. Every word equalizes in it. Every sneeze. It gets refurbished in trees. Holds up birds.
first glance...
a phase shift bends
our agenda
At night, its sea swells with a lush darkness. Sparkles with distant sand. On the land of highland clear, you can almost fall into its stars. Barely a haze between you and the rippled moon.
meeting you halfway particles and waves
Go ahead! Take a leap through the green ceiling! Let your fins stretch as you visit the dry pixels. Feel the cool, sleek film leave your scales for the sky. Yearning to fly.
last glance...
our myths sink into
counter gravities
About the Author
Kat Lehmann is a founding co-editor of whiptail: journal of the single-line poem. She serves on the panel for The Haiku Foundation’s Touchstone Distinguished Book Awards. Kat lives on the edge of a Connecticut forest, where she is captivated by the grandiose within the details. katlehmann.weebly.com.
Hello Kat,
I am so glad I stopped by to read this. What a beautiful imaginative haibun. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Have a great day.
All the Best, Karina
Glad to hear this, Karina! Wishing you a great day too! 🙂
What a gloriously odd and wonderful haibun. You’re like a shaman, conversing with a spirit creature. You’re like the medicine woman of the Tao of Physics, strangely (and I use that word wholly positively) equating the quantum fundamentals of nature and physics, as you alternate haiku and prose. Talking to the trout seems to have given you a very unique voice, a lyric intimacy that is quite captivating, as if we’re listening in on a conversation between mystics. The writing itself outside its narrative drive is repeatedly lovely and fresh in its details: ”red euphoria”…”The scent of sunrises”–that first paragraph is full of delightful descriptions of the air. And you wonderfully alternate the ”lush…swells” of the prose and the ”glances” of the haiku: for example, ”a phase shift bends/ our agenda”–what a creative way to capture something about the crazy force of natural and human change. It is a very moving and mysterious haiku (as are the others), and a true counterpoint to the prose. Altogether, a joy to read and respond to a haibun that encouraged this reader to ”leap” and ”fly.” Thank you!
Bill! Thank you for sharing your thoughtful response to this haibun. I enjoyed embodying the scenario am glad this exploration found a soft landing with you 🙂