Mind of Rain

Very rainy here in Portland, Oregon. Here is my haibun (mixture of haiku and prose) about acclimation for you. Thanks to Haiku Empress Margaret Chula for inspiration.



Mind of Rain
a haibun


forty days of rain—
my sunny disposition
a soggy crocus

Ten years ago, we moved to the Pacific Northwest in autumn. A few weeks later, the sky opened. Sprays, showers, mists lasted till the next May. All day the sky and house were dark. I had a three-year-old daughter to take care of, and I’d lost all my friends. Mud slides. Floods. Trees down on neighbors’ roofs. The lights went out for days. A colleague called long distance and pleaded, "Start to write again. No one else writes the way you do." Never before had I seen crocuses fall over because they were waterlogged. One spring day I gave a tour of Portland’s Japanese Garden in a downpour. The green lushness of trees, moss, lichen, and flowering plants entered my mind. I picked up my pen.

strange yellow sky-ball
you assault my subtle mind
give me mist instead




--Karen Braucher,
copyright 2006