Rapture

It’s odd, this gift of solitude.  Perched beside the canal that runs behind our site, I affirm my connection to the earth, give thanks for this place and moment, and acknowledge that I am a part of all that surrounds me.   The late afternoon sun casts a glow on the foliage across the way lighting up the mirror-still water with vibrant reflections.

Two winters ago, I was fighting to breathe as temperatures dropped below zero. Trapped inside my home by impassible walkways, I was desperately trying to stave off depression.  It’s hard to be hopeful when isolation is imposed.

“There are no absolutes in life,” a professor once told me, and I think of that now – how just when we think our sentence has been handed down and sealed, an opening appears.  I have been most fortunate.  I savour each moment this current state of solitude offers.

Heron’s watchful stride
invites reflection, respect –
winter’s solitude.

(Kim is hosting in the dVerse pub tonight with solitude being the prompt for our haibun.)

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VJ

Permission to write, paint, and imagine are the gifts I gave myself when chronic illness hit - a fair exchange: being for doing. Relevance is an attitude. Humour essential.

35 thoughts on “Rapture”

  7. I think you’ve given a beautiful example of what I was trying to say too. However much we might want to not be alone, we are, always. It’s maybe simply that we don’t notice it until we find we can’t get out of bed, or we see it reflected in someone like that heron. Lovely words, so clear, like water 🙂

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    1. Thank you, Jane. Illness does bring things into clearer perspective – again something only the patient understands. Ok, enough…let’s go celebrate something, lol.

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  8. The Heron is one of my favorites. We don’t have a lot of them, but there are a few. It takes finding them, aI remember the first time I watched one, not that many years ago. I was in awe of the balance and focus and longevity he had in eyeing his prey. I thought it all very strategic of him. And the total peace he seemed to have. His wait outlasted mine. I had other things to do.

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  9. Hey VJ: complex emotions — awe and fear in interplay, depression and bravery. I liked how Kim mentioned that she saw water in so many Haibun and ’tis perhaps it is because water often carries that archetype. The Heron Haiku was nice — making the Heron seem like your muse or spirit animal for this Haibun.

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  11. Water has featured quite a lot in this week’s haibun and I understand why. Living near water myself, I appreciate the solitude you find perched beside the canal. I love the description of the late afternoon sun casting ‘a glow on the foliage across the way lighting up the mirror-still water with vibrant reflections’. That’s what it’s all about, particularly when you’ve been isolated inside your home through illness. Herons seem to be solitary creatures, don’t they?

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  12. the word respect stood out for me as your haibun reflected that, whatever you had experienced prepared you for the future, a respect learned the hardest way

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