Haibun Thinking: The Time Of Our Life

Week One of Haibun Thinking was a wonderful success. Thank you to everybody who came and gave it a go. I want to thank the ones who have given it a go for the first time this week as well. If you want to know what I am talking about, it is a new challenge on the Japanese writing form of Haibun. If you want to have a go, take a look here.

This week we were given the choice of a quote by Robert Burns:

Gathering her brows like gathering storm, Nursing her wrath to keep it warm

Or the photo prompt which I chose.

© MaryAnn Holloway

Digging up the past creates so many different possibilities.
We find creatures of wondrous size and disproportionate mass
We find fossils so tiny they are impossible to see
The naked eye can tell us a lot
But more can be told when we delve inside
We find our world was a different place
Safer for some
Not for others
Birds the size of a battered sausage
Others the size of a titan
Earth belongs to man
We inherited it from the past.

We dig up skeletons from our closets. Monsters, Apes, Dinosaurs, Fossils, Bones, People.

history will tell us
from where we came and how
but we say where we go

Haibun Thinking – The Love of Animals

This is my first post for the first Haibun Thinking – a new Haibun Writing Challenge. The choices were:

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
– Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

and

Monty and Ranger
© Kathryn Forbes

get the InLinkz code

The Love of Animals

Life shows me how nature loves life.
I see seals playing with each other
I see giraffes with their necks intertwined.
Pachyderms wrapping trunks to tails

I see dolphins jumping together
I see bees entering and leaving their hive,
Ants walking side by side
Horses hugging each other

I see penguins walking together
protecting the young of others
Dogs running with other dogs
Cats playing rough and tumble

animals playing
humans killing each other
why can’t we get on

I’m After Your Help

Very soon – Tuesday 21st January – I will be starting a new challenge. I have been asked by several to host it, and with the help of those, I will be creating a new blog for a weekly Haibun challenge.

The challenge will be in rotation – Photo prompt, Poem prompt, Film Quote prompt, Art Image prompt, Freestyle.

I am after Photos and Art Images to use as the prompts. Full credit will be given to photographer and artist.

If you email me at mondrak@gmail.com with your name and blog address, I will give you and your blog credit when it is used. Thank you

Dawn of a New Challenge

Memories – A Haibun

The Līgo Haībun Challenge is a weekly challenge where you choose something to create a post from. Whether it is fiction, a poem or something dear to you. It is a two-part post that is one part as I have just mentioned and the second part is where you finish with a haiku style poem. Each week, there is either two photos to choose one of; two quotes to choose one of; or two words to choose one of. This week it is two photos – “Two swings in the snow” by Ye Pirate, and “A view of grass from below” by Penny. I have chosen the swings. This brought back a memory of when I was a child of nine or ten. Every time it snowed enough, we grabbed cardboard boxes, old blankets, bread crates, anything that could be sat on and ran for one of the steepest hills. There is a photo of the hill at the bottom.

© Ye Pirate

The snow fell as tiny flakes. Each unique, each telling a story of its own, each with its own arms attempting to grab hold of the one falling by its side. I grabbed the cardboard box and I ran to catch up with my friends. To our small legs, it seemed a long way to walk or run, but with the snow, we knew the walk ended in joy and fun.

Running up the road always hurt the chest. Always made the legs ache. Always made the eyes water as the road led up a steep incline. At the top, the road led down and through a tunnel. We ran screaming through, shrieking, and our sounds reverberating off four walls.

Emerging from the tunnel and the hardest part of the journey now lay ahead of us in the form of a steep hill. Running from side to side, making our way up so we did not use all of our strength in one go, but each wanting to be the first.

The top of the hill felt like a playground to us, with the cardboard being our swings, the breadbaskets our seesaws. The far side beckoned us children. The youngest – eight years old, the eldest – thirteen. Then the yelling as we ran and leapt onto our chosen sleds, hurtling down the side of the hill faster than we had ever travelled before.

children in winter
speeding down hills in the snow
then climbing to repeat 

Sugarloaf Hill
Folkestone
UK