Not gonna lie. This isn’t my best effort. I’m on the road and have been up since six, will be up until 11 or so tonight. It’s one of those days. But I did manage to come up with a haibun inspired by this fortune.
Also, because I’m on the road and traveling with fortune cookies didn’t seem terribly convenient, I’m using an app called Daily Fortune. Here’s a screenshot of today’s fortune from the app:
screenshot from “Daily Fortune” app
Be not afraid of growing slowly; be afraid only of standing still.
About an Oak By Michelle Garren-Flye
Did you know the oak tree roots spread out as much as 90 feet around? Imagine them pushing soil, slicing slow motion through earth’s surface, past the reach of the canopy of the huge tree rising above. All to anchor and support the oak’s magnificence in one place all the days of its life. Standing still and racing along all at once.
Oak tree emerges Seasons’ passage grows your roots Anchors you in place
As soon as I read today’s fortune, I remembered one particular night. You see, I love to laugh, but sometimes I think I’ve forgotten how. Then I have a moment when laughter lights up my heart again. I know this fortune is true, but I don’t always know how to make it true for myself.
Maybe that’s how we all are, to a certain extent. Surviving day to day.
I can say that nine times out of ten, when I find myself in that warm light of laughter, it’s with my kids, the human beings I love most in this world. And that’s what this poem is about.
I chose to write it in haibun format, which was invented by Matsuo Basho, the master of the haiku. A haibun is a prose poem and a haiku smashed together. I’ve attempted them before. I think this one works, to a certain extent.
I hope you enjoy it, anyway!
Photo and poem copyright 2024 Michelle Garren-Flye
laughter shall fuel your spirit’s engine By Michelle Garren-Flye
They dragged you out, these children who have grown into friends. You’re usually bathed and in bed by now. Tomorrows are always full. You have to be ready. But they want to have fun. They want you to have fun, but fun is not something you practice. There are too many tomorrows ahead, too many yesterdays behind.
The golf place is full, but you have a reservation. They serve beer, so you have some, hoppy smells tickling your nose hairs. The lights are bright, and there is a heater nearby so even though you’re outside in January and there will be snow tomorrow, you take off your coat. Frustration mounts with every golf swing, until your oldest son misses the ball entirely and yells, “Fun!”
And there it is, bubbling around you, the energy needed to fuel your spirit, as first you and then your children who are now adults and friends—your yesterdays and your tomorrows—shout it together, hurl it into the night air with the white golf balls hailing onto the astroturf:
giggling bubbles burble in your life spirit laughter is your peace
Poetry continues to be my main objective in spite of a couple of ideas I’ve had about novels. If I hear about a new form of poetry, I have to try it out. And then I have to stretch it. Remember Stretch Armstrong? How you would stretch and stretch him to see how far you could stretch him and he’d still go back to his original form…until he didn’t.
I sort of feel like I did that with haibun. Haibun is the combination of a haiku and a prose poem. Matsuo Basho wrote them. I discovered them relatively recently and decided to give them a try. And stretched the form a bit. What do you think? Is it still a haibun at its heart?
Silence
By Michelle Garren-Flye
it’s awkward, silence,
because it wants treasuring
and I reject it
laying too heavy on my ears in the dark, begging to be broken, shattered against the brick wall, revealing the death of sound ringing in my ears, spilling out like the yolk of an egg until the utter madness is stunned by a brief click in the wall behind the thermostat as the furnace breathes life into our emptiness…
don’t rejoice too soon
complete silence verges on
total perfection
you will seek it again, want to crawl into it, feel it envelop you in velvety warmth as if it can never break because it always always bends and that’s why you can never make friends with silence, why you can’t love it even if you want it, you will always seek release from it, but…
the birds will ghost you
the wind and waves will give up
leaving you…awkward
BREATHE: Michelle Garren-Flye 