Photo byย Aaron Burdenย onย Unsplash
I remember the wonder of reading about Zeus and his Olympians fighting the Titans in Edith Hamilton’s Mythology. I remember the delight reading about Lucy meet the Faun in Narnia in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I remember the fascination of reading about Bilbo free the dwarves from the Mirkwood Elves, or of Gollum biting off Frodo’s finger and fumbling into the fires of Mount Doom. These fantasy stories in myth forged my apprenticeship in story.
I savored the romantic turns of phrase employed by Blake, Byron and Whitman while in high school. I shuddered before the epiphanies wrought by Carolyn Forche’s The Country Between Us. I stood mesmorized by the beautiful imagery of Basho’s haiku and the poets of the man’yoshu (ten-thousand leaves)’s tanka.ย These poets inaugurated my journey along the Way of Poetry.
There, I encounter Hortensia Anderson, whose haibun inspired my own. I experience the incarnational imagery of Denise Levertov, and the simple presence of Jane Hirschfield. These avatars of inspiration guide my steps.
And so I write, because I must. Because writing captures a sense of the ineffable and enfleshes it in form that I can experience. Because I experience such ecstasy. Because I am a haijin on the Way of Poetry. And the journey continues.
twilight
savoring the delight
of poetry
for dVerse’s Haibun Monday, guest pubtended by Toni Spencer!
Frank J. Tassone 
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