A haibun

I have been fascinated by haibun for quite some time, though never been able to write one. Sooner or later, i will. Meanwhile, in order to educate myself , i have been reading up a lot of haibun on all the online journals. Here is one such haibun that i came upon on my reading spree. Many of you might have read it already, but this is for those who have not and who are too lazy even to click upon a link. So here i bring it to you on a platter: titled Self Surrender, from Modern Haiku, winter-spring 2010 issue, by Carol Pearce-Worthington.

Self Surrender dusk. fireflies avoiding my fingers we eat lunch at a drugstore counter near the courthouse and he buys a paperback book that he hopes to take with him and we walk east to the fortress within which somehow live and breathe the ill conceived the unfortunates the police the prosecutors the guards the unthinkable the mummified and we climb stone stairs into the stone walled waiting area where we stand because we cannot sit and we cannot speak and him now with no choice but to go on into this tomb and to leave me returning to the street alone and he cannot make himself go and so police wearing plain clothes come out and take his arms and lead him to the gate and unthinkingly I call to him the three men turn and I salute him us our future lost and he says only yes and a guard opens the doorway wired to a metal detector and he walks through it how far does a star fall in the night sky

by Carol Pearce-Worthington