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Marjorie A. Buettner...

Haibun

Over Darkening Ground

These brown spots that suddenly appear on my forehead and arms remind me that time leaves no one untouched. My 14 year old daughter tells me they are just freckles, but I know better. I see her unbound and yielding to the world--her bedroom windows opening out. My windows open in, letting only the star-glittered night air enter my sleep. I have become selective and removed, shielding myself from too much given away, too much taken, too much left behind. In dreams I see my hand become my mother's, curled around itself, ladened with age. It wants to fly from me like birds started at every sound. I pretend to know their distant flight pattered by an internal compass which guides me, the lost, over darkening ground.

migrating turtles . . . the way the river turns in on itself

WHCHaibun 2004-06-14

Copyright Marjorie Buettner, 2004