If you can hover in the heated air simmering over those shifting sands, will some primeval spirit begin to stir in your blood? Will you be able to hear the songs of the first camel caravan, smell the ancient wisdom in the flickering light of old camp fires and read the poetry spelt out by the sharp edges of the waiting dunes?
Can you discover in the depths of that brown ocean, the bleached lives of intrepid men and beasts and the lost stories of their impassioned journeys that the shadows try to recount every evening at sunset?
in the restless desert
like sand through clenched fists
time slips away
THOUGHT PURGE 
Lovely. Gives me the right kind of shivers up my spine. 🙂
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Wow.. thanks a lot for that comment!!! Glad you liked it.
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Thot … I am in awe. What a beautiful haibun … your haiku is a masterpiece.
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Thank you Chèvrefeuille… I keep learning from your site and the community everyday.
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Lovely…(y)
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Thank you Ruchi 🙂
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Asking the reader a question is a surefire way to hook his or her interest.
Why Would MMT Write Desert Haiku?
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Lucky enough to live in beautiful desert surroundings??? More questions!! 🙂
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I`ve travelled through time in one swift sweep….like a reel on fast forward. At the weekend my grandson and I watched several documentary videos on the age of dinosaurs and you cover so much in few words not wasted.
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Thank you for that kind comment. I enjoy your Haibuns a lot, have just started working on this form, glad you liked it. Enjoy the special time with your grandson 🙂
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I did! he’s back home now.
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A beautiful series of questions, Rajani, that caused waves of awareness to lap against the side of the bowl, and spill over the side… I love the desert image. The emptiness that dissolves resistance. The finding of something dear in the midst of what seems so barren…
Michael
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Thank you Michael…I find the desert so intensely beautiful..in a way that one is completely humbled before the awesomeness of nature, and by that realization can find every answer one seeks.
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Oh goodness…I lived in the deserts of Saudi Arabia for ten years…and loved it. .I can’t even comment properly so much did your haibun – my favourite writing form – infuse into me! Seriously, I think I gave an audible gasp. Very well-captured. I could go on. Better not.
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Appreciate your comment so much, since they come from someone who has taken Haibun writing to totally different level. Thank you.
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Well, as said before, I am not one to throw flowers of praise, but you have a gift you have worked very hard at. You approached this haibun from a completely original angle, you caught that essence of the desert, but again, in a manner that frankly entrances the reader, and not with silly, light petals but reality. I wish I could teach this haibun in a creative writing class. I am particularly awed by the opening – the theme; nature, without cheap sentimentality, always a winner, and of course the delicate fitting of the quality haiku to the prose.
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Thank you… look forward to your critique and encouragement as I attempt more haibun in the future. Appreciate this greatly.
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Reblogged this on Travels with Tio and commented:
this poem has all the magic of a mirage
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Thank you Tio Stib 🙂
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Touche. The tighter we clench the more the illusion we can hold on.
Bocci ball is an Italian bowling-like game. The poem was written at the Italian winery AND I think Rip Van Winkle played a game like that when he was with the fairies or wherever he was while sleeping.
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Thank you Colleen. I think you’re absolutely right..bocci ball with the fairies surely..I can see it now! Such pleasing imagery in your poem!
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Wow, that’s a powerful haiku–Excellent.
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Thank you Dell Clover… am quite excited about blending travelogues and Haiku into these experimental haibuns.. interesting challenge!
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Yes, very creative indeed!
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The smell of ancient wisdom is now; the lost stories of bleached lives rush towards the now.
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Hopefully “now” recognizes them and is waiting!!!!
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We posit the positive in the hope that reality will comply out of politeness if not necessity.
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Ah! I like the idea of a polite, complying reality 🙂 The “real” reality however is probably complicit in the crime of complete denial (or ignorance) !!!
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You are right: the bulk of evidence unfortunately seems to chime with a complicit, scoundrel reality 😦
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