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First published in Rattle #87, Spring 2025, page 62, an issue that paid special tribute to haibun. Scheduled to be featured on the Rattle website on 23 June 2025, with an audio recording. Originally written in January 2024.
Visiting his mailbox was a daily ritual, just around the corner from his bungalow. Sometimes he’d forget his key and trudge back home, but to combat any annoyance, he reminded himself that forgetting meant more walking for his daily step quota. Not that he was all that health-conscious, but he knew, like everyone else, that getting in his steps was good for him. Today he remembered his key. As he turned it in the lock he played another ritual in his mind. Bad mail or good mail? Just bills, and advertisements destined for the recycling bin, or maybe a letter from a friend? The days were fortunately a mix, with enough good mail that he was right often enough, and sometimes it was a good mail day even when he predicted bad. Today, though, his mailbox was empty. He wondered for a moment, like he did on other days like this, if the mail might not have been delivered yet, but since the day’s winter light was already waning, he concluded that yes, today no one loved him, not even his mortgage or sewer companies. He walked slowly home, the key back in his pocket, adding more steps as clouds began to darken the afternoon. How was he to know that he would never check his mail ever again?
tenth anniversary—
an unknown bird
trilling in the arbor
Contributor note:
“Haibun gives me a chance to tell a story or provide a context, with the knotholes of each haiku providing a farther view through the prose. I look for a leap between the prose and the poetry, not too far to make the connection seem unlikely or unbelievable, but not too close to seem obvious or predictable. The pairing should be both surprising yet inevitable. That doesn’t mean this is easy to do, even after years of practice. In my haibun, I sometimes tell personal stories, but also welcome fictional scenes, and hope that whatever I convey might resonate with at least one reader. Perhaps that reader is you?”
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