Kim881 at dVerse gives us solitude as the prompt for Haibun Monday. Like haiku, haibun is a Japanese form. It combines a prose poem with haiku. For a long time I have declared to myself that I don’t like prose poetry until I realized that I know nothing about prose poetry. So I’m trying to learn. In 2016 I wrote a normal post “Light on a coffee mug.”  I have thought it some of my better writing, and so I stole from myself for most of this poem. It’s allowed.

The prompt: For this week’s Haibun Monday, write about solitude: it could be meditative solitude, solitude in nature, or just plain old sitting alone in your room solitude. That’s up to you. But you should write no more than three tight paragraphs about solitude, followed by a traditional haiku that includes reference to a season.

haibun 2419

 

Featured image is an original digital photograph taken in Second Life. No post-production.

 

 

13 Comments

    1. Thank you for reading and commenting! You’ll see that I agree, there aren’t just two selections: the silence of solitude and lonely depression. There is the embracing of the solitude.

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  3. love the last line of your haibun, it also connects with your opening line, there are blue sounds that wrap us in a peaceful serenity, a place of solitude

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    1. I remember that day well, from that original post in 2016. The sound of the rain, the smell of the coffee, and being wrapped up in “cozy” until I wasn’t. Those same things, especially the rain, became an accusation of loneliness, where I wallowed a while. Until I realized there is a peace in that solitude, and a heightened sense of things, like light hitting mugs. Thanks for the comment!

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      1. light hitting mugs – such a beautiful description from the heart, i like to sit quiet like that, let the day slowly descend and my coffee sup is usually my focus too, thank you for sharing this moment, i felt a deep connection to your words

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  4. I feel like you have captured my experience and laid it bear for all to see. Solitude turning to loneliness, and possibly depression and then the realization that the hubbub is no longer tolerated, so turning back to solitude with gratitude.

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    1. Exactly. I wrote some of that in a comment to Gina, above. Some of us make big pilgrimages in search of silence (especially writers and other creatives). Others of us (and I wave my hand) have silence and solitude thrust upon us, whether we want it or not. Hopefully there’s a coming to terms with it, and there was for me, at least on that day in 2016. 🙂 Glad the poem resonated for you.

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  5. For someone who doesn’t like prose poetry you’ve made a good job of this haibun! And rewriting or recycling your own poems is definitely allowed. Poems are living things, they develop over time, and even when published, they aren’t necessarily complete. I love the way the phrases at the beginning of the first paragraph to turn into sentences, a gradual coming to, regaining consciousness, prompted by sounds, smell and sight. I especially related to the shift in the second paragraph, ‘when silence clicks into loneliness, curves into depression, recurves into itself’, a familiar feeling well expressed and your haiku sums it up precisely.

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    1. Well, for lack of a better word, I am gobsmacked by your comment. I also want to cuddle with it. Thank you for your kind remarks and your insights into what worked for you. The original 2016 post was just an “in the moment” prose post of a rainy day, but for some reason I wrote it in a different style and I think it worked. It was interesting trying to change it and distill it down into one of these mysterious prose poems.

      I get annoyed with folks I’m cooking for if they see something and just won’t try it. “I don’t like it!”
      “Have you ever had it before?”
      “No.”
      “Then how do you know you don’t like it?”
      And I realized I was doing the same thing with prose poems. 🙂 So I’ll hang out with them for a while before determining if they are icky or not.

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