Haibun: Time Passages--By Angelee Deodhar--India

Haibun: Time Passages

While packing books to send to friends in different countries, today I am back in that time when he would help seal them with cello tape, label them and then make a list of all the people they were being sent to. He didn’t complain about this tedious task even when he had to sit with one leg straight out, stiff from surgery, which left him unable to bend his knee…he enjoyed the geography of where the books were going…and loved to collect the stamps which came with gift books from different parts of the world.

Soon it will be two years since he passed away and now these brown paper packets which I pack clumsily with stiff fingers, carry away more than books…
            
                           Jacaranda-
                                            the jazz of an
                                                                April sky

 Contemporary Haibun Online July 2013, vol. 9, no 2

Angelee Deodhar, an eye surgeon by profession is a haiku poet, translator, and artist. She lives and works in Chandigarh, India. Her haiku/haibun/haiga have been published internationally in various books and journals, and her work can be viewed on many websites. To promote haiku in India, she has translated six books of haiku from English to Hindi, which she distributed for free. These bilingual books include: If Someone Asks: Masaoka Shiki's Life and Haiku (2005),Classic Haiku: A Master's Selection, edited by Miura Yuzuru (2006), Ogura Hyakunin Isshu: 100 Poems by 100 Poets (2007), Children’s Haiku from Around the World–A Haiku Primer (2007), Indian Haiku (2008), and The Distant Mountain: The Life and Haiku of Kobayashi Issa (2009).