Haibun – In the Forest

Through the pine forest, tilled light in measured shafts. Pale weeds grab at it, such greedy luminescence. The mulch is thick underfoot and my own words reverberate in my ears “life includes death”. Right here on the forest floor, death is making life again – brown and rich as magnificence.

It occurs to me that age goes up and down from the Earth’s crust and we walk on the centre line. I picture myself on the the y axis, an atom in the height and depth of time. It always overwhelms me to realise that the line I draw on a page to represent the y axis is a cross section… a point chosen in infinity’s span. I feel myself growing tinier and tinier.

Ahead of me there are shouts. A bogged bobcat rears out of long dried mud. The front door leans against the almost buried engine cage. Cobwebs string the interior – a spiders’ dance hall. A metal ramp piece angles from under the wheels like a blade. Clearly efforts were made to salvage the machine, but to no avail. The kids climb over it, calling theories loudly as though we are all fifty metres apart. In my ear mozzies whine and the humidity sticks to my skin

                                teetering on a moment
                                             i feel the forest's press
                                      and the greater sphere of leaping dark