Haibun: green water

I have never seen the canal in sunlight, never seen its water clear. Plane trees meet high overhead, holding up the unseen sky. Some see a green cathedral and hear angels singing. I see tree gods and hear a symphony of birdstruments, wild flutes, clarinets and oboes. There is no sun here, but an even, green light, and the water waits, still, dimpled with insects walking, and fish lips rising to kiss their feet.

The world has shrunk
this damp spring to still water
pooling at my feet.

Published by

Jane Dougherty

I used to do lots of things I didn't much enjoy. Now I am officially a writer. It's what I always wanted to be.

31 thoughts on “Haibun: green water”

    1. Thank you 🙂
      I was thinking of you yesterday and your fox problem. Husband put the bottom of one of the compost bins around a bay tree just inside the gate, really stinky, slimy stuff, fermenting grass cuttings and rotted down kitchen peelings. The dogs dug up and ate most of it before we realised what was going on. I’ve dug the rest out and replaced it with a mulch of dry grass clippings. I wonder if your foxes were up to something similar?

      Reply

      1. It’s very likely, Jane. We compost garden waste , but not kitchen scraps because of rats. Happily the foxes have not been around lately.

      2. I will! The plane trees will all have been destroyed by 2035. A fungal disease imported from the US in boxes of munitions apparently is working its way through the 45000 trees. They’re replanting with different varieties but it will be a long time before that canopy is replaced. The disease hasn’t reached us yet, thankfully.

      4. It’s just one of the unwanted gifts of globalism. We import and export our diseases, our species that don’t fit into other ecosystems, just so people can grow bamboo in suburban gardens and have exotic pets that always get loose into the environment.

  3. Oh the memories of taking our boat up for brokerage along canals like this. Mooring up for the night and listening to the sound of silence or night birds rather than sirens and people.

    Reply

Leave a comment