haibun || Sheila E. Murphy

We did not disturb the screen, which was already torn. Instead, we wiped away the scarred paint
so the eye would travel naturally to another place. Not as insects might seem to enter 
the walled emptiness. A more novel seeming way to seek surprise. To bless the sudden stasis 
with a lake nearby. We took ourselves into a polished vehicle, pearl white, and drove away 
from water. Where for days we had been looking at the trees in little feather pockets lining the 
water's edge. People arrived unplanned. People who owned places on the water where 
they slept to rhythm of the water swishing forward, drifting back. The thought of fishing and 
the thought of quiet and the distance from routine made things as simple as a rest that stretched
across four measures. We left the screen scratched, twisted, and we looked into the woods
once more before the engine took us back into the state of motion, where we planned to reach
a plane in time to lift. 

On view, a tone, apart from its tone row, the intervals between

Sheila E. Murphy