THE HAIBUN GALLERY: 5th June 2025. Diana Webb - Guest Poet
- Kala Ramesh
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
host: Rupa Anand
mentor: Lorraine Haig editors on haikuKATHA: Shalini Pattabiraman, Vidya Shankar, Firdaus Parvez and Kala Ramesh Guest Poet: Diana Webb
A Thursday Feature
5th June 2025
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT BELOW
THE HAIBUN GALLERY June 2025 - Diana Webb
Prompt 1week
PROMPTS for June 2025
Diana Webb
Wonderlust
Nothing better than 'still travel'. No visas, no tickets and no packing. Find a spot near a meadow, or a pond , or even a park around your neighbourhood, and sit still for about twenty minutes. Slowly the place reveals its crittered and feathered secrets . Over seasons, the stones begin to tell their stories.
more of what
I don't know -
light on the river
Salil Chaturvedi
from his book A Little Knowing
Prompt
The medieval mystic Meister Eckhart talked about the four paths, all of which worked in conjunction with each other. From the via positiva and the via negativa came the via creativa with the culmination in the via transformativa. I believe all of these are present in the piece above. A person's attitude can transform what could seem a negative situation to be lamented, into something very different. The above piece came over to me as something which could have been written in lock-down and shows how moving a very short way from where one lives can be a deeply creative and transformative experience not that different perhaps from becoming aware of how something familiar to an adult can appear through the eyes of a child. The river is never the same river. The river of time always affords new discoveries along its waters and the inner child is always dancing along its banks on the verge of new insights.
Write a haibun about being restricted to a small area of wandering in which you recover the amazed eyes of your inner child with their most intense vision shining out of the concluding haiku.
******** Diana,
A beautiful prompt and challenge. Looking forward to your month.
Thank you so much.
_kala
******
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT NOTICE
NOTICE
Dear Haibuneers
Starting from March 2025, we at haikuKATHA are moving on to a new submissions format for haibun submissions. (Only for haibun, please note!)
Writers are invited to submit one unpublished haibun per submission window.
Kindly note the submissions calendar.
1-20 March, to be considered for publication in May
1-20 June, to be considered for publication in August Here's the link to the Google Form dedicated for this submission.
1-20 September, to be considered for publication in November
1-20 December, to be considered for publication in February
All accepted submissions will receive an email to confirm their acceptance by the 5th day of the publication month.
Your unpublished (only one) haibun should be sent to:
The Google link will be given in this space soon. This form will open only during the submission period.
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The Haibun Gallery continues as is.
We will be having editors and prompts, and your sharing…
#1
Secrets from those who no longer speak
The funeral March of Chopin's b-flat minor Sonata needed a setting. The creek close to the campus led to an abandoned cemetery, where the last date I could find was 1950. I come here once more, not to quiet my own adolescent quests but to find the solace necessary for letting my mind conjure the music without the complexity of sound-making.
unaware
of sweet terrestrial song . . .
the sky weeps
Alfred Booth
Lyon, France
(feedback welcome)
Haibun 1 - 06/06/25
Earth Fountain
There is total green around me. Leaning back on an easy chair, I breathe in the morning. The sunbird is up early. I agonise as to why it has not settled on a branch, on a frond, on something. For two months he’s been aflutter with those high-pitched tweets in search of an appropriate nest. Like humans, perhaps he’s prone to anxiety, caution, suspicion, hyper-activity and indecisiveness.
Or he’s plain fussy.
I shift my gaze to a honeybee nudging its proboscis into unopened moss roses. Nature is alive and abuzz with activity. Tabebuia bunches hang heavy, and drop slowly to embroider themselves into a cross-stitch of yellow on green grass.
cat & i
chased…
Dear Diana,
Thank you for this quite & serene prompt. Lets see what surfaces.
#1
06 June 2025
Who found whom?
I almost missed the one feeding off my curry plant. It has a false eye and looks almost like a curry leaf streaked with the curry plant's stem. How did the butterfly know that my little obscure frontyard garden had curry plant in them? How did the one who was left here to feed learn to hide unnoticed?
the little seed sprouts under a fallen leaf
Leena Anandhi, India
Feedback welcome
#1
The Breadth of a Step
It is known locally as ‘The Little Cut.’ It runs behind six houses with a large wall and some trees. The path is caked with mud. You can peek into the back gardens as you wander through the sunbeams. The trees knot tightly together, twisting shapes through the clouds.
woodpecker drill
the nearness
of leaf fall
I’ve simply crossed the road from my house and I’m there. A world within a world. My shoes aren’t ruby they’re silver. No matter. I’m wherever I want to go. A mirror, a trail of ivy, an open door. A neighbour asks where I’m going in my party dress and party shoes. I simply…