dawnsong

March 2024

Haibun (俳文, literally, haikai writings) is a prosimetric literary form originating in Japan, combining prose and haiku. The range of haibun is broad and frequently includes autobiography, diary, essay, prose poem, short story and travel journal.

Catch the sun bleeding out from behind the cloud cover. Feel the crush of half-frozen ground beneath you with each new step. The sky is split with indecision, still a little more winter than spring, and it makes you sneeze to inhale too much of the cold air at once — but it’s enough. Your breaths have stopped condensing. The ducks are back. It’s enough.

Warmth taunts, frost lingers;

winter still scrapes at your shins.

You miss the sunburn.

February’s shadow sprawls over the snowdrops, pressing them into a wilt beneath the weight of the morning’s chill, but March sings regardless. Hear it thrumming with the shock of dawn, the wash of sun. Each naked, clawing branch has finally started to murmur of the coming blossom, flourishes of green against the grey-brown which startle brighter than anything you’ve seen since the equinox. This gold-soaked, newborn day. It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. We have time.