Seasons – haibun for dVerse

There are so many seasons, overlaid like layers of paper – like one of those books with separate flaps you had when you were a child, so that you could create a clown with a ballerina’s body and farmer’s boots, or a spaceman with a gingerbread tummy and toddler mary-janes.

There’s the calendar year, of course, but I don’t pay much attention to that. The academic year still runs my life – new shoes and pencils in September, a surge of freedom in July. This year we’ve had Big Exams in our house, so Exam Season has been stressier than usual. Hay Fever Season is another biggie – I watch the pollen report, even though there’s not much I can do about it. The farming year dictates the smells, the mud, the dust, and the likelihood of getting stuck behind a tractor, and Grockle Season started early this year – an outbreak of windbreaks and pop-up tents on our local beach as the visitors invade; caravans and campers on our deep, narrow lanes. Our local ice-cream vans come out in March and disappear in October. The first cone is the start of something –  I’m not sure what.

We skin-swim all year, and suddenly it’s a pleasure, not a penance. We look a little slant-wise at the people swimming in wetsuits. They are missing out on the fiercest sensation of all.

 

seasons shift and flow
suns rise and set, tourists swim
the sea is always there

An unconventional haibun for Jilly at dVerse.