Forgotten Roads
Marjorie A. Buettner
February 23, 2001

This road that curves and bends through hamlets pine laden and river rich, bends and curves, it seems, back on itself, while the winter wind captures snow crystals and lifts them, then releases them, into the air, through silent benediction. How long I have traveled over these roads through these towns while letting memory wind and rewind itself around me. How can I answer those questions that haunt the past and how do you reconcile the present now full of ambiguous joy and amorphous regrets? And this landscape reaches out to you and requests your hand, inviting you with its eloquent silence to travel down pathless trails where only the wind whispers your name and only the trees bend and sway as if in continuous salutation telling you that, yes, there is room here for a little while longer for you--this shared history that may include you at each and every breath you take.

the long way home
serpentine snow drifts slide
across the highway

Marjorie Buettner writes haiku, tanka and sijo along with haibun. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with her husband, 3 children, three cats and one Siberian husky