THE HAIBUN GALLERY: 12th March 2026. Linda Papanicolaou - Guest Editor
- Srinivas Sambangi
- 2 hours ago
- 2 min read
Editors on haikuKATHA: Shalini Pattabiraman, Vidya Shankar, Firdaus Parvez and Kala Ramesh
Guest Editor: Linda Papanicolaou
Featured Poet: Patricia J. Machmiller
Host: Srinivas Sambangi
A Thursday Feature
12th March 2026
In the thick of it . . .
Patricia J. Machmiller
This morning a dense fog muffles the sound of
breakers. It rolls shoreward, rises curling lightly,
passing around and over the house. A hawk on the
hunt flies low over the dunes. Today’s news arrives
sheathed in an opaque plastic wrapper. Locked down
we’re eager, yet anxiously dreading, to see the daily
numbers: how many got sick, how many were
hospitalized—how many died. We wonder about the
fog—when it will burn off? By eleven . . . or noon . . .
or one? Maybe it will last all day . . .
lost summer
how will we know
when it’s over
—between sun and shadow, ed. Naia, Yuki Teikei Haiku Society Anthology
2023 p 66
Commentary:
Patricia’s haibun begins by localizing it at the seashore between the
breakers the dunes, evoked in three sentences that suggest a curving
around and enclosing a beach house. The isolation of the Covid Lockdown
s broken by the arrival of a newspaper sheathed in plastic like what we in
the US called as PPE (personal protective equipment). The fifth sentence
introduces the occupants of the beach house who are wondering between
themselves about what’s going on beyond their immediate ken.
Most of my own haibun are written in first person singular and seek to
convey to a reader the particulars of a personal event Patricia’s choice is
first person plural, which takes us into the realm of a universal
experience—in this case the.
Prompt:
Write a first person plural haibun about the personal aspect of a
commonly shared experience.
***
This week's featured poet takes all of us back to covid period. I'm sure everyone likes the prompt that lets us share the shared experience in first person plural
And, thank you Linda for being with us through this month!
_Srinivas
I'm sure everyone likes the prompt that lets us share the shared experience in first person plural
let me be a naysayer here, the covid period was an imposed catastrophe, that pitted people against each other, especially if someone was smart enough to see through the governments' overreach and wisely bucked the trend
Energies
From our window we watch the comings and goings of residents in this close of forty four 1970s maisonettes that rises upwards from the river in the place where a mill once stood. Retirees, young couples with babies , mums with children who bounce off to school with bulging knapsacks. Through their glass panes we can see their TVs. Do they see ours ? What do they watch? A lot going on. Some quite scary. The close bears the ancient name for a nun as it edges a park which many moons back was a convent garden.
lights out
through many closed eyes
many candles flicker