Haibun
- Details
- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
The widower pieces together her sound, her scent, her step to fill the hollow that lies waiting in the middle of the night. A chill wind soughing through the window cracks mimics the sleeping of her lying down breath cradled within his embrace.
endless night
unrelieved even by
a piercing comb
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
spliced genes
- Details
- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
- Details
- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
Clay fashioned into a semblance of a self. At first a form ready to be washed away as thinning earth colour back into the mire or to be baked into a figurative moment of permanence separated from its origins.
Is such a making independent of will or is it the fruit of a profound silence knowing only itself?
breath-gathered
dust
warping mirror
between the shapeless
and the shaped
an old man
no longer astonished
a yawning gulf
that the reflection
is him
The waking hour strips the world of an irretrievable gift. A gift so deeply intimate that it is only conceivable in the stumbling beginnings of aspirated words which may remain no more than glimpsed reflections. It bears the traces of the weightlessness of shadows from the timeless instant of the bringing forth of light by word alone.
anywhen breeze
the moon swans about
its reflections
- Details
- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
Editor's Comments
Titles in a haibun can add so much to the richness of the piece in question. In this fine example the title takes a song from the Beatles White Album and sets the tone for the entire piece. The first line of the chorus of the song in question is: “Ob-la-di, ob-la-da life goes on brah”. That song was written by Paul McCartney, and the other Beatles hated it, and John Lennon despised it. Now comes this young man of eighteen, who sees himself as Lennon, who takes his own life, valuing it less than his ‘brah’ did. Wow, that just sent me into a tailspin. So many implications here if you have the time, or take the time. As a reader you have your work cut out for you!
Then we reach a haiku that caps the entire effort. The advent is that time of anticipation of the birth of a savior, yet prior to the birth that holds the keys to the resurrection, a rope swings and creates the moving shadows that mirror the chiaroscuro images of the artist, who has taken his own life. Indeed, this story creaks, like the beam used to end his life, through the reader as well, twisting and turning you as you connect with the story being told. If you have ever lost someone to suicide you can’t help but be taken by the skillful detail in this fine and deeply sensitive haibun.
—UHTS Haibun Editor Mike Rehling, USA
- Details
- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
cattails Premier Edition - January 2014
Editor's Choice - Haibun
Sometimes the most complex interactions we have with others revolve around birth and death. On the one hand, not one of us can avoid these two events, nor can they be experienced in a way that allows them to be fully shared with others. Yet, there we are in the midst of "the end", without words that matter, without explanations that truly have meaning. In the end it is the "silence" that most fully defines these moments, and completes the "sharing". This haibun brings this fact into sharp relief without a wasted syllable. Silence indeed takes a ‘form’ of it’s own, and fills the spaces in and between.
—UHTS Haibun Editor Mike Rehling, USA
- Details
- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
- Details
- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
- Details
- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
am i here or are all my other moments of being here penetrating the present? am i processing what i am sensing or am i also in the overlaps of presents? if memory is the mother of the muses is her grandchild the alchemy of my history of nows in the crucible of the heated ecstasy of being here now?
the fire
of birdsong
in a day's embers
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
does the nearness of non-thinking, or that which passes for such, break through, breath by maddening breath, the fogs of perception into the tripping tongue clicks and aspirations enfolding rounded sounds of words snatched from the void of dead letters ocean-bobbing in corked bottles
all night
the namelessness
of becoming
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
- Details
- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
All living things manifest their livingness by their ability to
• grow
• move
• breathe
• respond to stimuli
• eat and drink
• excrete
• reproduce
I have been present at the birth of each of my children, and also at the birth of puppies, kittens, calves, lambs, birds, insects, flies, flowers and trees. The shortest lived stage of each is the last of these abilities.
shortest night —
sounding out his name
a morepork
All dying things manifest their livingness by slowly losing their ability to
• reproduce
• excrete
• eat and drink
• respond to stimuli
• breathe
• move
• grow
I have been present at the death of each of my parents, of relatives, of friends and also at the death of dogs, cats, cows, sheep, birds, insects, flies, flowers and trees. The loss of the last six body functions more or less follow this order of withdrawal in the final hours or days.
Where in this process resides consciousness, will, imagination, love and malice and when do they leave?
longest night —
the artist paints
his white 'I AM'
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
As a member of the seven thousandth generation of the not-yet-extinct homo sapiens species, my use of language continues to open up an infinity of meanings from a finite range of words, just as if my words are being reflected back and forth endlessly between two mirrors.
My stringing together of words to penetrate the understanding of others empowers me with a capacity to represent things and happenings that are not occurring in present reality to take up residence in the shared imagination of our intercourse.
I take and eat
bread broken
on the altar
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
Today I recall the years when, as destitute students, we occasionally gathered together from all over the inner city to share a meal. The host would fill a large pot with water, drop a large stone into it, and place it on a hot stove. Each guest would then bring their offering obtained from food cooperatives and communal gardens to add to the pot. Offerings of onions (both red and brown), carrots, celery, potatoes, leeks, pumpkin, parsnip, spinach, capsicum and so on joined seasonings and herb garnishes to gather the many into one.
When it was ready we would break bread and consume the feast.
dewfall —
the ripples en route
from a single word
- Details
- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
Hear that? It is time running out. From lily pad to lily pad it side-skips the reflections on life lived in darkness.
just words blindly sifting silences through an hourglass
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
"Dystopia?"
"My eyes have been squinting."
"All three?"
"One after another."
gallows pole
a wind chime hangs
on each word
- Details
- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
Without the creation of a word to name it in the late sixteenth century, did the doctrine or belief that there is no God have existence? What prompted the active rejection of God leading to the refusal to believe in that than which no greater can be conceived let alone have the ability to even conceive of a being greater than oneself at all? Was it the hubris of an impatient heir on the brink of committing parricide?
Some three hundred years after the word was created Friedrich Nietzche proclaimed "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
A self-avowed atheist, did Nietzche mean that there was once a God who had actually died, or rather that the collective idea of one had? Following the so-named Enlightenment, the idea of a universe entirely subject to laws of physics instead of divine providence was now reality. Philosophical discourse had shown that governments did not need to be based around the idea of divine right to be legitimate, but rather formed by the rational consent of the governed — that it was possible to develop a full-scale and consistent human morality without reference to God. It seemed that the human adventure no longer needed God as the source for all morality, value, or order in the universe; philosophy and science now seemed capable of doing that for us.
Stephen Hawking's The Grand Design states "M-Theory predicts that a great many universes were created out of nothing. Their creation does not require the intervention of some supernatural being or god. Rather these multiple universes arise naturally from physical law. .... Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."
Are we the words we make flesh from?
my shadow follows
the sun to the edge
of the earth
- Details
- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
- Details
- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
- Details
- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
- Details
- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
For the present I live within walking minutes of the river that shapes and waters this valley. Two parks run parallel to the river's course through this part of the valley. One is called Moonshine Park and the other, Poet's Park.
Birdsong in the nearby stands of dense native bush is the leftover sound of this land from psalms chanted before the advent of the human presence. My heart burns within me as I catch snatches of the silence that the floating world drowns out catchphrase by catchphrase.
panting deer . . .
a hyssop branch drips
sour wine
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
Look! Look! Seeing does not lighten the burden of changes with which light redefines the musculature of envisioned hills and valleys on this side of the Eastern horizon. A pen scratches away that which is not bone from the remaining two dimensions.
a momentary less of now
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
Midnight mumbles with an ancient ache as you lower yourself into the movement not yours. The hour's stillness lurches with the vibrations of the cottage’s contortions at each joint. The rise and fall of the floor against your weight pulls against the former cling of place.
The familiar disappears — a brief candle lit against the sound and sway of what snuffs it out. Feel it — back and forth — your breath cradled in the wrack and roar of foot-falls against rising shadow — vertigo that does not lessen with a shake of your head. It is here now - the mind failure that shakes off the words that once made sense.
crop rotation
the roots of belonging
wrenched free
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
The light in the room is dim and gray. It is an overspill from that which is much like that outside the window. For a time I am in and of the wider world.
a moment
to be consumed by
no longer being
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
In 1974, my partner and I shifted from the country's largest city to buy a small rural holding on the southern slopes of Mt. Taranaki on which to raise our first-born. It was a place far away from the peopled-world she seemed to choose to shun. The land came with lush vegetation, crisp mountain air, a clear stream, and a disused cottage. The rich soil soon yielded its energy to us through our growing harvest of vegetables and herbs.
I used my developing do-it-yourself skills to provide our home with running water, light, and heating.
afternoon delight—
the love of God
is all about us
The toll of working 12 hour shift rotations daily in the train marshalling yards which were some 12 kms away, and the violent midnight destruction of our chimney by a substantial local earthquake did nothing to lessen our resolve to provide an environment that was acceptable for our child.
Our respective parents soon also moved to Taranaki to be near us. We gathered regularly with them on Sundays. My partner's aunt, who was a world famous novelist soon made the move to Taranaki as well.
Often our conversations turned to our daughter's increasingly alarming detachment from the world, her total lack of any language development, despite our literary preoccupations, while her motor skills developed early. Our heaven-gifted child skipped the crawling stage altogether and moved in a short time from walking, at 8 months of age, to running wherever and whenever she could with no sense of danger and no awareness of her dependence upon us.
mountain fog—
the apple of my eye
slips through my arms
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- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun
Feel this! The ache rendered by my inability to gnaw the glory of being here now to the bone.
a kingfisher gazes past the dalliance of sparrows
- Details
- Written by: Stephen Bailey
- Category: Haibun