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Marjorie A. Buettner...

Haibun

Penance week

It is penance week and I dream of dead priests who do not absolve me; I am left hanging on to the phone counting my sins and feeling unforgiven, unforgivable. I tell him of the many ways I have tried to change, I have tried to renew, I have tried to overcome, but his silence and his withdrawal tells me how deeply I offend and how lost I really am in this world. And where is that golden thread to lead me out of the labyrinth? I cannot see the trail of it any longer and my motions forward feel like motions backward--thrust into darkness--the landscape passing me instead of I passing it. Yesterday I saw the lake slowly unwind itself from the ice, that scent of spring rain in the air palpable, and overhead, as if from out of nowhere, two swans flew so close to me that I could almost touch their feathers. And to tell the truth this is the sort of grace I have not expected; it is a benediction that saves. For now, I will confess to the wind all my unforgivable sins; I will give the emerging flowers my unredeemable guilt and maybe, just maybe, the spring rain will absolve me.

a movement of deer into twilight suddenly spring

WHCHaibun 2007-03-28

Copyright Marjorie Buettner, 2007