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My haibun poem, The Silver-Eyed Wolves is in response to POW Kerfe Roig’s prompt for this week’s W3 Weekly Poetry Prompt at The Skeptic’s Kaddish. This will be my second attempt at Haibun.

 Kerfe’s prompt guidelines

• Compose a haibun that contrasts past and present.
From Poetry.org:in How to Haiku, Bruce Ross writes, “If a haiku is an insight into a moment of experience, a haibun is the story or narrative of how one came to have that experience.”

The Silver-Eyed Wolves

Sunset | Photo©️Lesley Scoble

Crepuscular insects chirruped, an incessant comfort filling the sultry evening with a gentle, hissing, rhythmic hum, like brushes sweeping on a drum. Tall grasses lined the dusty path leading up to the cliff top and murmured in response to a gentle breeze—the zephyr was whispering to them from the sea; and they played along with the wind, performing a sweet symphony rustling in harmony with the chirring cicadas and grasshoppers. 

Their footsteps were soft on the dry, sandy ground. Each step sent out little powder puffs of sand as they padded upward along the narrow pathway. At the cliff top, the pack paused and looked out to sea. They watched. Their eyes glinted red in the sunset. 

The large sun hovered above the ocean between night and day, betwixt the past and the present. The star was unwilling to go down, but it was inevitable. Irrevocable. The great fireball was sinking, sinking. Everywhere became imbued in a hue of angry scarlet and purple, emblazoned in the sun’s bloody last farewell. The sun at last gave in and sank into the water. Its powerful light sizzled and drowned beneath its surface. Quenched. This day was gone forever. The wolves howled. 

Past was a breath ago;
now is only a moment;
wolves howl, then they’re gone.

As the last rays of sunlight disappeared, the moon emerges from behind the clouds, bathing the forest in a pale light and the wolves’ eyes shine brighter than before, and gleam with a luminance of pure silver.

 The pack knows I am there but turns away to leave me be—playing my lute beneath the sycamore tree. The wolves move like ghosts through the trees, as one with the forest. They are at the beating heart of the moonlit landscape. I watch them disappear into the moon-shadows, their silver eyes fading away into the night. 

Lesley Scoble. Haibun, 2023

‘tis the moonlight realm
where silver eyed wolves roam free
the lute plays tonight

Lesley Scoble. February, 2023

The Wolf Moon, 2023 | Photo©️Lesley Scoble

Acknowledgements
My thanks to Kerfe for the haibun poetry challenge, and to David, the Skeptic Kaddish.

Image Credits
Sunset | Photo©️Lesley Scoble
The Wolf Moon, 2023 | Photo©️Lesley Scoble
Siver-Eyed Wolves Watch A Lute Player | Digital Art©️Lesley Scoble