#Haiku Happenings #4: Jules’ latest epic-poem #haibun for my current #haikai challenge!

Midsummer’s Eve Saga (haikai, Aooga Su, MLMM Su, SPF, Q, saga haibun)

The ancient man came in from the cold.

Without asking I offered warm mulled cider

And a chair by the fire…

Once refreshed he offered to tell me a tale.

What wise lesson could I learn or

What words would he spill to make me yearn

To escape the walls and the gossip that seem thick

With all the telling clear and slurred…

Would his words alone be enough to take me

there, highbrow or lowdown – someplace new?

I was a stationary stalker hungry for adventure.

I brought a table nearer, told him to rest his

Elbows on the table, take some weight off of his thoughts.

And so with a sigh he looked me straight in the eye

“Listen I am not quite myself today, so much traveling

For one so old… but I do have a tale of lovers to unfold.”

“Grace and Maxwell wanted to escape their lots in life.

Perhaps not even together as husband and wife.

But seeing as they ‘bumped’ into each other on the way

From traveling some moonless night into a new day…

They became quite companionable ~

A very good thing for two strangers to be so stable.

Yet they made an error to trespass in a witchy wood.

And their thoughts were overheard but misconstrued.”

“Stopped in their tracks and turned into young saplings

With quick growth spurts due to magicked trappings,

Twisted and turned into their favorite dreamt animal

One who would never forget, a vegetarian, not a carnivorous cannibal.

With just a slight note of pity on the young the spell was cast

And entwined like trunks, their elephant noses, entwined, held forever fast.”

As this scene I imagined I let out gasp ever so slight –

Wynn Woo seemed pleased to jostle a tiny fright.

I saw a twinkle

like the blink of a June Bug escape Wynn Woo’s eye

(see next page

©JP/dh

nd 6.7 Midsummer’s Eve Saga – Jules Pens Some Gems…