Rattlesnake Canyon
That summer my first blood arrived
while I was camped in the woods
of Montana.
rainbow weather—
turning wet stones
for trout bait
I knew what it was, but still wondered
what sin against Nature had earned me
this curse. . .
thigh-deep
in the rush of snowmelt
empty creel
. . .like the little Kumari Devi,
expelled from her Nepalese palace
when she proved herself mortal.
this deep lull
of afternoon creek song
letting the hellgrammites go
Youmans, Rich (ed), Contemporary Haibun, Vol 19. Red Moon Press, 2024
FIRST PRIZE: San Francisco International Haibun Contest 2023
__________
Commentary (Judges: Stephen Henry Gill, Shalini Pattabiraman)
Seldom does one encounter a piece of writing in which man and nature are so completely at one. “Rattlesnake Canyon” transports us back not only to adolescence, but to primitive times, when man lived in communion with nature and not apart from it. Following on from the ancient Daoist philosophers of China, Basho referred to this holistic paradigm as ‘jinen’ and he believed in it. Dee has interwoven a personal narrative of discovery and doubt (in the past tense) with three excellent haiku (in the present), all of which could stand on their own. The prose is lineated as if it were a poem, partly perhaps to avoid the ungainly layout that would have resulted if each short paragraph had been spread out wide, shallow and too regularly between the haiku. Lineation here helps construct an appearance of asymmetry, as well as slowing down the delivery of the narrative, thus more effectively separating the poems. I enjoyed the allusion to the Newari goddess incarnate, Kumari, of whom I once, when in Kathmandu, did catch a precious glimpse! At the very end, in letting go of the hellgrammites (mayfly/dobsonfly larvae used as fish bait), the reader also feels somehow launched with them … surrendering to the current as it winds away into another story in some reach of clean water further downstream. (SHG)
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