I would rather write about waterfalls than about my life. About the tumble of Niagara over the old dolomite, the gradual eroding, the diminishing diversions, the control of nature on a river that flows from a lake so great it holds a ship that once held you. A ship that plies through locks, that loads and unloads ore. A ship that weathers storms. The rough hands spark their lighters in the rain, they smoke their way to forgetting.

recurrent change 
metal meets spike 
lucky horseshoes   

Rachel Greve

is a water resources manager from Madison, Wisconsin. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Drifting Sands Haibun; #FemkuMag; Frogpond Journal; Jackdaw Review; North Coast Voices 2025: Poems of the Great Lakes (Main Street Rag, 2026); ONE ART’s 2026 Haiku Anthology; and Rattle. She’s introverted but willing to discuss literature, theology, and cool rocks.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡Pentecost, haibun and commentary by Rachel Greve published as a daily poem in Rattle online on 27 February 2026 (reprinted from Issue 90, Winter 2025); this poem was a Finalist for the 2025 Rattle Poetry Prize.

⚡ 2025 Rattle Poetry Prize Readers’ Choice Award; for the analysis of Greve’s poem by mathematician and haibun scholar Colleen M. Farrelly, scroll down to the second section of commentaries: On Rachel Greve’s “Pentecost”