Tiger Riding for Beginners

Traveling Poet Philosopher & Occasional Wiseacre

Butterfly Paralysis [Haibun]

Posted on August 4, 2021 by B Gourley

Struggling to wiggle its wings, the butterfly warms in the morning sun. Is it like sleep paralysis - that hypnopompic impulse to flee that's stymied by stuck muscles? What's a wind gust or rapidly advancing shadow like for the butterfly? Normally, such occurrences would provoke an erratic fluttering away. But now the screaming instinct to wing away can't be answered. Does the butterfly know dread, or does it just quietly await the moment it's unfrozen?

cool morning -
a butterfly twitches,
but can't yet fly

Dead Leaf Mantis [Haibun]

Posted on June 9, 2021 by B Gourley

This mantis pulls off the dead leaf look. Its abdomen mimics a leaf - desiccated and rolled up upon itself. A barber-sign slant spiral of veins add the perfect touch. Even once one notices the six thin legs, legs invisible to all but a piercing, hunched-over stare, there remains a period during which it is more acceptable to the mind to think of it as twiggy leaves than as an insect. Amid a litter of dead leaves, I'm sure my eyes would never land on this skinny bug, but even on a rocky outcrop that's perpetually swept bare by way of the breezes that whip and wrap around the mountain, it still seems more leaf than bug.

a dead leaf mantis,
standing in an unlikely place,
yet my mind screams, "Leaf!"