Two Haibun

Unwanted

Alone she delivers her fourth child, a girl in the field, cuts the cord with the scythe, and tying off the cord with a sacred red thread she wraps the tiny bundle in a piece torn from an old saree. This infant unlike the other three is alive with bright button eyes. She nurses it once from her bursting breasts, then quickly places it in a grass lined basket to which she has tied a stolen cow bell beaded necklace she hopes will attract the attention of temple goers in the next village on the banks of the river. She lets the basket gently slide into the water, buries the afterbirth and hurries back to the paddy field oblivious of the rain.

rustling cattails-
a swift current carries away
cowbells

Crossroads

Driving back from Costco's at a traffic signal, I see a man in a tattered Hawaiian shirt and shorts limp his way across the median. Holding up a cardboard sign which reads 'Veteran, Please Help', he comes closer salutes the people in the cars. No one gives him anything. Across the traffic island another shirtless man with a similar sign moves from car to car. Amazed that they have beggars in San Diego, I look at my Indian companions, who ignore the two men and continue to chat about their latest hair dyes.

Had we been driving in India, there would have been an annoyed reaction and a shooing off of the beggars; perhaps here it is the norm to have half clad men begging at traffic lights...after all, it is summer...

pannini  sandwich -
the  hot pickled pepper
brings tears to my eyes

Dr. Ms Angelee Deodhar, an eye surgeon by profession as well as a haiku poet, translator, and artist lives and works in Chandigarh, India. Her haiku, haibun and haiga have been published internationally. She has edited Journeys in 2014, and Journeys 2015 an Anthology of International Haibun.