My oldest granddaughter is ten, and speed reads. She’s deep into The Hobbit for the third time. When you’re reading, do you hear the words? I ask. She looks up, stares, and nods.

eyes wide open ...

The folded sheet has been in my wallet for years. Her fingers tease open its browned edges. Eyes move down the page. Suddenly, she hesitates at a line. Bites her lip. Reads the line again.

another moonless night

And suddenly I’m back, in a room bruised with polish. A voice on the radio. My mother asleep as I lean back and listen to the sound of words.

hearing voices

She has her great grandmother’s eyes—sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack. Do you love the sound of that line? I ask. She nods, and folds the paper. Holds it tight in her hand. And so it begins. At the beginning.

 

Author’s Note: The phrases “sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack” and “To begin at the beginning” feature in the opening of Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas. Narrated by the character First Voice, it is widely praised for its aural intensity and beautiful cadence.

 

Publisher’s Note:

Under Milk Wood: A BBC Radio Full-Cast Production of Dylan Thomas’s poetic play for voices, starring Richard Burton as the First Voice narrator and Richard Bebb as Second Voice, was originally broadcast in January 1954, two months after the poet’s untimely death. The completed version broadcast in 1963 includes several passages that were omitted from the original, and Richard Burton narrates as both First and Second Voice; this performance is available on YouTube at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USsMZrXpliY&t=77s

Lew Watts

is the haibun co-editor of Frogpond Journal and the co-author, with Roberta Beary and Rich Youmans, of Haibun: A Writer’s Guide (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2023), which received The Haiku Society of America Merit Book Award for Best Prose in 2024. Lew is also the author of the poetry-themed novel Marcel Malone (Red Mountain Press, 2016), the poetry collection Lessons for Tangueros (2011), and two books published by Snapshot Press: Tick-Tock (2019), a haibun collection that received an Honorable Mention in The Haiku Society of America Merit Book Awards for 2020; and Eira (2023), a collection of haiku and haibun that received a Touchstone Distinguished Book Award in 2023 and The Haiku Society of America Merit Book Award for Best Haibun Book in 2024.

His haiku, haibun, and rengay appear in numerous print and online venues, including A Hundred Gourds, Acorn, bottle rockets, contemporary haibun online, Drifting Sands Haibun, Failed Haiku, Haibun Today, Hedgerow, The Heron’s Nest, Kingfisher, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Modern Haiku, Presence, Prune Juice, Rattle, and Wales Haiku Journal, among others. In addition, his writing has been anthologized in several volumes of the Red Moon Anthologies and the Haiku Society of America Members’ Anthologies, and in Gratitude in the Time of Covid-19: The Haiku Hecameron (Girasole Press, 2020).

Beyond poetry, Lew holds a PhD in geology; is ex-chair of the World Bank’s external panel on climate change, and a past board member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the home of the Doomsday Clock; and currently sits on various corporate and non-profit boards. Born and raised in Wales, he lived and worked for many years in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa before moving to the United States in 2002. He now lives in Chicago with his wife, Roxanne Decyk, and they have two sons and four grand-daughters. His other passions include fly fishing, jazz guitar, tango music, and gin martinis.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡Two dozen of Lew’s haibun (plus his book review of Roberta Beary’s haibun collection Crazy Bitches) appear in MacQueen’s Quinterly; see Index of Contributors for the list.

⚡ The Art of Haibun Prose by Lew Watts in contemporary haibun online 21:3 (30 November 2025)

⚡ Rattlecast 287 (30 March 2025), with editor Tim Green and featured guest Lew Watts discussing haibun for an hour plus (the interview posted to YouTube runs from 06:48 to 1:29:00); Watts reads eight of his haibun, including four from his book Eira.

⚡ Book Review: Eira by Peter Newton in contemporary haibun online 20.1 (April 2024)

⚡ The Horizon’s Curve, collaborative haibun by Lew Watts and Rich Youmans in contemporary haibun online 16:3 (December 2020)