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    Small Events: A Collection of Haibun
    Small Events: A Collection of Haibun
    Small Events: A Collection of Haibun
    Ebook37 pages35 minutes

    Small Events: A Collection of Haibun

    By W. F. Owen

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    About this ebook

    Awarded Best Haibun book by the Haiku Society of America in 2008, this expanded second edition offers sixty haibun. A haibun links brief, imagistic and poetic prose with one or more haiku. Traced to Basho’s 17th century travel writings, these English-language haibun involve concrete stories (small events) where the everyday becomes remarkable.Typically, modern haibun are like short stories ending with one haiku. For example:

    The Taste of Blood

    The last dog we had growing up, a boxer named Bullet, developed the habit of jumping up and laying his paws on the chest of anyone who approached. Licking and slobbering, he only wanted to play, but would knock over small children so we were forced to take him to live in the rural town of my grandparents. There was plenty of open space, rabbits and possums to hunt. When he needed to be chained, he had the shade of the plum trees. On our visits, we would throw the green canning plums for him to chase. He liked to chase. He also sometimes went after the neighbor’s chickens and killed a few. “Once they get the taste of blood, you might as well shoot ‘em,” the man explained. And one day, that’s just what he did.

    first fist fight the taste of blood in my mouth

    Most of my haibun are autobiographical and sometimes chilling events:

    Mumblety-peg

    The pocketknife lands in the black Texas mud just beyond his foot. In this game called split, we take turns throwing a knife outside our friend’s position. He stretches a leg out to the knife, pulls it from the ground and takes his throw. The first person to fall while stretching loses. This Yankee kid named Ed stretches out, loses his balance then falls, to the hoots and howls of my buddies. Keeping with tradition, I wipe my blade clean on his clothes. Ed is from New York and talks funny—he calls our knife game “mumblety-peg”— but he has a nice Case pocketknife and turns out to be our high school’s best football player. After a while, we get used to his northern accent.

    September sky hearing that a friend was in the first tower

    Others are humorous and ironic:

    Stomp

    As a university undergraduate I had a summer internship at the Juvenile Detention Home in Honolulu. On the first day, I see there is an element of danger. A caseworker has a swollen cheek and black eye from yesterday’s escape attempt. My immediate supervisor, Pete, gives me two bits of advice: Don't turn your back; and keep smiling. I watch him and he does just that. This man in his fifties has a permanent smile. Not a happy-face-sticker smile, but a genuine glad-to-be-alive one. The entire staff has this smile and one odd behavior: In conversations, each uses the “foot stomp,” a slap of the foot nearest to you. Stomp, laugh. Pete introduces me to the superintendent. This small, articulate man has the loudest foot stomp of all. After three months, I file in my notes the hypothesis: Volume of foot stomp increases with status.

    end of summer on the storeroom floor flattened cockroaches

    They all are quite real stories. I hope you enjoy them.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Owen
    Release dateJul 8, 2010
    ISBN9781452457772
    Small Events: A Collection of Haibun
    Author

    W. F. Owen

    I'm a professor of communication (thirty years) and a creative writer. My main interests are haiku and related forms, and science fiction. I've published in all of the major haiku journals (e.g., Frogpond, Modern Haiku) and several anthologies. Also, I have won several contests sponsored by the Haiku Society of America. Finally, long ago, I taught SCUBA diving as an occupation. I lived in Hawaii for ten years.In the past five years or so, I've rekindled my interest in photography and, most recently, graphic design. Check out my sites on Fine Art America ("Bill Owen") and RedBubble.com ("BillOwenArt"). Thanks! ?

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      Book preview

      Small Events - W. F. Owen

      Small Events: A Collection of Haibun

      W. F. Owen

      SmashWords Edition

      Copyright 2016 W. F. Owen

      All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Cover: W. F. Owen (photo). Photo taken at Shark’s Cove, North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii.

      For Caroline, Kennedy and Corey

      and My Parents Billy Gene, Sallie Bell and Frenchie

      ~~~~~

      Small Events

      Memories of my fifty-six years run together like photographs in a family album put together in haste, out of chronological order, too many shots of some events, too few of others. Pictures of the living and the dead, immortalized. Cherished photographs: my sons’ hits in little league, summers pulling catfish from the Colorado River, four years a Marine, twenty years a Professor, ten years a SCUBA instructor in Hawaii. Small events have made me, such as having to retake high school biology. After I aced the course the second time, my teacher told me I should think about going to college. Thank you Mrs. Simmons (oh yeah, I’m sorry I called you Simons to irritate you all those times). Other images stick in my mind: the quiet school hallway the afternoon JFK was shot (my sixteenth birthday), puffs of smoke from the Texas Tower that hot August day (it was my friend Joe’s idea to drive down to see the sniper). And last, moments of perfection: nailing a haiku, spearing a line drive, swishing a three-pointer, earning my expert badge at the rifle range.

      boot camp album counting the Marines who died in Nam

      Dedicated to Platoon 196, First Battalion, Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, California, 16 June-11 August, 1967.

      ~~~~~

      Clicks

      Sitting with A. C. in the predawn Texas autumn, his 1957 Ford running with the heater on. He has driven us to this wild pecan grove in the hill country to hunt squirrels. His only son is grown and in college. Like an uncle to me, I am familiar with his personal habits. My feet roll over empty beer cans on the floorboard. Puffing

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