Our son spends his summer shadowing a local architect. For a project, he develops new floor plans for our house.

clearing the thicket

None of it adds up. I take photos of us jumbled and tripping over each other. We need room for legs and elbows. Places to write and think.

all the invasive weeds

Then it appears. A house for sale with everything we want, with hiking out the back door. But no memories of rocking babies. No hop-scotching over familiar creaks in the wooden floorboards. No toddlers running the circle of rooms. No lawnmower towing the playscape into position as my belly rounds with our second child. And no river.

blooming with flowers

I walk down the hill to the river and mix my tears into the rushing current. Then return the next day to do the same. We are leaving.

Kat Lehmann

is a haiku poet, a potter, and a scientist based in Connecticut, USA. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and has been honored in The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Awards (individual poem), the Haiku Society of America Harold G. Henderson Haiku Award, and Japan’s Basho-an Award.

Kat is a Founding Co-Editor of Whiptail: Journal of the Single-Line Poem and an Associate Editor at Sonic Boom. She serves as a panelist in The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Distinguished Books Award (2021-present) and is a judge in the annual Trailblazer Contest. Her third book, Stumbling Toward Happiness, shares her notes of self-exploration.

Kat’s work, including her experimental “sudo-ku” multi-haiku form, can be read at her website: https://katlehmann.weebly.com/

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Sensory Revelation Tank, haibun by Kat Lehmann which was nominated by MacQ for the Red Moon Anthologies, and selected for publication in Contemporary Haibun 17 (Red Moon Press, 2022).