Unexpected Color
A summer haibun for a surprise grasshopper
I’ve really been enjoying the haibun form lately. Here’s one inspired by an eastern lubber grasshopper I saw recently.
Devoid of flowers in the rainy Florida summer, the bougainvillea was a wash of green. It vined its way up the brick wall of the house and spilled over the edges. What wasn't propped up bobbed in the breeze. Walking past, it was nothing more than green, but a gem lay nestled in the thorny branches. Where normally fuchsia bracts would scream out, a grasshopper sat still. It did not startle. It observed the world that was observing it. Yellow abdomen accented with black. Yellow legs verging on orange. Lace wings of rose and black. A different kind of flower among the green. Color finds a way, fills in where it's expected, even in unexpected ways.
open your eyes
summer brims with being
you are but oneWEEKEND POTPOURRI:
Currently on repeat:
The Republic of Letters recently shared some beautiful, no-frills poetry by Lewis Dimmick
And Only Poems Daily shared the always magnetic Alejandra Pizarnik
A(nother) poem:
ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET
By John Keats
The Poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead; That is the Grasshopper’s—he takes the lead In summer luxury,—he has never done With his delights; for when tired out with fun He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of earth is ceasing never: On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.
