What new thing have you found or made this summer?
In this “Summer Quartet” blog series, you’ll see I’ve been pushing myself to try something new on my summer outings by bringing home haiku. Composing the haiku is a way of capturing things I encounter when I’m out and about, especially old, familiar things that strike me in new ways. At home I write prose around these haiku to create the haibun (prose + haiku) form.
In the haibun below, the abundance of squirrels that I’ve barely noticed up until now has given way to one, in particular, that has captured my attention …
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Piney
A flick of white-blond tail, and I stop. Grey-brown pine squirrels with hints of red in their fur (“Pineys,” my grandmother called them) dart through the grass so often I’ve stopped noticing them. Until the blond tail. I didn’t know that was possible on a grey-brown-red piney body. I grab my camera, wanting to capture the novelty. An unleased terrier wants to grab it, too. The dog rushes Blondie, who scales the nearest walnut tree. I return to the tree often and sometimes see the striking tail nearby, but rarely for very long. I keep my camera ready.
A flick of blond tail –
the piney scrabbles up tree
bark beyond our reach.
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P.S. Since writing this haibun, Blondie did give me one photo op from a distance (as you can see by the poor quality pics below).
Callie J. Smith 