I’ve had enough horror this weekend and wanted to dial back on that.  So, I am posting this new haibun  I fashioned out of an episode of “Song of the Nightingale”, published by Createspace, 2015.  It’s a bit ghostly.

–

The river of death is swollen with bodies fallen into it;

in the end  the bridge of horses cannot help.

—Saigyo

(it was a medieval military tactic to stand horses together to make a bridge for soldiers to cross the river.)

“River of Death”

Voice of Lady Nyo:

When the news of my birthing a son reached my husband, he was far from home, to the east, over mountains in dangerous, alien territory. A general in the service of his lord, the gore of battle, and the issue of ‘dying with honor’ began at first light. The air soon filled with the sounds of battle- dying…