Our Host: Ann E. Burg
Ann lives in upstate New York with her husband and her scarededy-cat dog. She was a teacher for ten years and is now a mostly-middle-grade author. Drawn to stories of the disenfranchised and voiceless, she usually finds inspiration in little known or too-soon-forgotten historical incidents. Though she’s no longer teaching, Ann continues to be interested in the challenges children and young adults face. Her books reflect her sincere desire to engage readers in stories which will broaden their world view and help create a more just society.
Inspiration
This year, more than ever, I’ve been preoccupied with peace, not just those elusive personal moments of quiet time to read or write, but peace in the grand possibility of a kinder world and a healed planet. Everything I experience seems to be filtered through this lens, this longing. Today’s poem is a haibun which captures a moment when this lens and longing came into sharper focus.
Process
A haibun is a literary form popularized by the Japanese poet Basho and introduced to me during a previous year’s Verse Love. In the haibun, a prose poem presents a scene which is accompanied by a haiku (three lines with a 5-7-5 syllable pattern) offering a deeper reflection. I’ve found that writing the paragraph or prose poem organizes my thoughts while the haiku distills them. There are many online examples of Basho’s haibuns written as he traveled throughout Japan, but there are also many present day sites dedicated to this form.
Ann’s Haibun
When the days of mourning had passed, the sympathy plants left at the funeral home were offered to family members. The smaller arrangements— the ivy, and singular succulents were snapped up first, then the mixed baskets, the dish gardens, and finally (with some convincing) one of the mourners agreed to adopt the graceful white orchid whose loveliness would certainly be worth any extra effort. All that was left was the 2 foot Peace Plant with its large, glossy, green leaves and tiny yellow flowers shielded by white, petal-like spathes. Few of the last mourners had room in their car for the Peace Plant. And where would anyone keep such a beautiful but unwieldy remembrance? I’ll take it, I said, my voice unusually loud and decisive. In a universe on fire, it suddenly seemed I needed the Peace Plant more than anything. I’ll find a place for her.
Green winged messenger
landed in my cluttered home,
bless this world with peace.
Your Turn
Now, scroll to the comment section below to write your own haibun. Begin with a brief paragraph that describes a clarifying moment. Follow with a haiku which distills that moment into something more sublime.
Because this is a public space, depending on your privacy preferences, you may choose to use only your first name or initials. Not ready? That’s okay. Read the poems already posted for more inspiration. Ponder your own throughout the day. Return later. And, if the prompt does not work for you, that is fine. All writing is welcome. Just write something. Oh, and a note about drafting: Since we are writing in short bursts, we all understand (and even welcome) the typos and partial poems that remind us we are human and that writing is always becoming. If you’d like to invite other teachers to write with us, tell them to subscribe. Also, please be sure to respond to at least three writers.
What a great prompt, Ann, and what a picture you paint with words.
Act or React
Thirty years in, and I still don’t know how to parent. I don’t know when to say what I am thinking/feeling and when to hold my tongue. I don’t know when to speak and when to be quiet. I don’t know when to step up and do something and when to stay back. It often feels like whatever I do, it’s the wrong thing. I know that their reaction is often because they feel safe and they know there is unconditional love, but I feel like I am the target of so much of their frustration, insecurity, and anger. I always heard “little kids, little problems; big kids, big problems” and that couldn’t be more true. Their dirty diapers, temper tantrums, and inconsolable tears were easier to deal with than this adulting thing. Maybe it was because I at least felt some control. Now, I’m left to wonder what’s going on, to try to do and say the right thing, and to pick up the pieces after the fact.
I may not need you
but if I do, get here now
and do the right thing.
~Susan Ahlbrand
13 April 2026
I started reading this morning’s prompt and thought, “This sounds like Ann,” and looked up to see it was Ann with her scaredy-cat dog (I should read the bios first). Thank you for being such a gentle force of nature; I’m forever thankful for the ways your books have allowed so many of us to flood classrooms with history and language. I loved everything about your story of a peace plant (and the haiku that accompanied it). It prompted me to think about the stories planted around my home.
Vaccinium Corymbosum
She often bought pierogis, leaving the plate on the floor of my breezeway. Whenever I walked the dogs by her house they knew they’d get sandwich meat. – it’s why I’d always find them on her front porch when they escaped the yard.
Najdrobniejszy akt życzliwości wart jest największej uwagi. Kahil Gibran can be translated into any language – kindness is meant to be universal.
On birthdays, when her kids came to visit, I’d bring her orchids, hyacynths, and eventually blueberry bushes to celebrate her life. She’d plant them along the fence we shared so they could kvetch with one another, including my own.
between our two homes
bees pollinate white flowers
causing blueberries.
I remember the morning her husband fell. Pomocy! Potrzebuję pomocy! Mój mąż upadł. I ran over and helped him off the ground. He was lying in her daffodils.
A few months later he passed.
She followed soon after.
I love the story. So much going on. I love the idea of the blueberry bushes “kvetching” and Gibran’s quote shown in you and the woman. Thanks for sharing.
Haibun: Sidewalk Edge
On the concrete sidewalk between nail kiosks and patio de comida, between the barking guard dog for “Doctor Pet’s” and the woman praying at the ten-foot cross in front of our apartment on Avenida Cultura, women set up long tables, hoist umbrellas and tarps, and begin the slow work of public life. Anticuchos simmer—grilled beef heart skewers—alongside choclo con queso, boiled Andean corn with cheese, and picarones, sweet potato donuts dusted in sugar. We have been here four weeks and never seen this in front of our building. Why today? Or maybe it was always here and only now visible.
It is election season. Yesterday there was a parade with full marching bands, the last day to campaign. Today, neighbors stream steadily in and out of the apartment gate for food, for conversation, for something like participation. It is election day in Peru. Voting is mandatory. There are fines for absence, deadlines for presence, instructions for belonging. Now it’s the day after: Officials say tens of thousands will be given a second chance to vote after ballots failed to arrive in time.
The street feels like instruction and celebration at once—children in school uniforms learning how democracy is performed, elders warning of corruption, music spilling into the heat. And still, the food is what people gather around. The music is what carries. The bodies know what to do even when the system does not.
I have seen versions of this elsewhere. Playa women in purple sang “¿Dónde están, dónde están, dónde están nuestros desaparecidos?” on the malecon. Thousands gathered in Cairo to demand aid for Gaza. Crete farmers stormed Heraklion Airport’s tarmac. Pensioners in Milan held trains for equity.
Everything I see gathers at the sidewalk’s edge, where I keep drifting through the in-between, watching but not stepping fully inside.
street rehearses peace
I watch from borrowed stoops
each scene echoes world
Note: This poem was also a mentor text for me today: Haibun by Maureen Thorson: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/149728/time-traveler39s-haibun-1989
Thanks for this interesting prompt! I’ve never heard of a haibun poem before, so I was glad to try it out. I enjoyed yours, the imagery and metaphor are strong.
Holding Space
A grateful hug, and then another, both of us on the receiving end. A simple How’ve you been? makes her eyes fill with tears. She’s holding it together, barely. I listen, nodding. I’ve been here before. I want to say it gets better, but she’s not there yet. The pain she carries was once mine. The despair she’s feeling, I felt too. I wish I could take it all away. But I can’t. She has to move through it, like I did.
Things are hard right now
But they won’t be forever
I am proof of that
Thank you, Ann, for this haibun. Your poem moves so gently from ritual of mourning to the quiet aftercare of grief, where even plants become memory-keepers. I love how the “Peace Plant” arrives last, almost unwanted, then becomes necessary; your final turn feels like a vow of hope inside a fractured world.
Sarah
Ann, thank you for hosting us today with haibun inspiration. Your poem brings all the tender feelings of caring for funeral plants and finding places for them in our homes and lives. It’s a beautiful thing to nurture plants and think of the person who is no longer here. My late mother in law nurtured two she’d named for friends who went before her – actually called them Jan and Harold. I’m glad you took the peace plant!
The Head or The Feet?
Saturday morning breakfast at the Country Kitchen on Pine Mountain we were waiting on our eggs and grits when I saw him shuffle past our table. A young and impatient mother with a crying child pitching a fit was stuck behind the elderly gentleman in in the aisle, clearly frustrated at his slow speed, in his ill-fitting sweatpants with black socks and orthopedic sandals. He veered right n the direction of the restroom and she squeezed left to her table, kid still screaming. My husband’s back was to the action as I gave the play-by-play. Notice him, I urged, when he comes back by. I thought it ironic that his orthopedic sandals looked like hiking sandals. Life can be cruel like that sometimes, but eggs arrive to scramble hard truths. I was taking a bite when my husband asked, Is that a veteran’s hat? We should buy his breakfast. And the next minute, this husband of mine – just like his mother would have done – excuses himself to walk by the man’s table to get a better look. And then I saw them talking. Why did tears fill my eyes? Why, here at this table, over eggs and bacon, coffee and grits and buttered biscuits with muscadine preserves, was I crying as I watched my husband place his hand on the shoulder of the old man and his wife as he thanked him for his service. I escaped to the gift shop to collect myself, wipe away the tears, before my husband returned with the scoop – as his mother would have done: it’s a veteran’s hat. He’s 78, was a sergeant in the Army, and he has four kids who are all currently serving in the military. His wife told me he has cancer, and when he finished chemo and his gray hair came back dark. And he always smiles. So we finished our last bites and I felt the tears welling again, excused myself to the restroom, and was almost fine until the old man walked by and place his hand on my husband’s shoulder in gesture of figuring out who’d treated them to breakfast. And I realized what we’d always said of ourselves when we walk into a place: I look down for snakes, he looks up for bees ~ and though we see things differently, we don’t miss what’s important.
I looked down, old feet
my husband looked up, saw him ~
a soldier marching
Oh Kim,
This is so beautifully touching and poetic all at the same time. I love how you sequenced the play by play scene, your mother-in-law, the mom and crying, the veteran, the breakfast. The haibun to wrap that moment in time. You have me all teary-eyed and smiling at the same time. What a gift!
I had to sit with this a bit before I could respond, Kim. So moving. So incredibly moving in the uncovering of this scene, in the description that revealed so many layers of life around and within the very human breakfast at a diner. So moving to see this humanity, this love, this care. And what an answer to Ann’s invitation to write about peace today, peace in the war-filled, cancer-spreading life of this man and his family. I love the shift where “he looks up for bees” lands—it beautifully gathers difference and love into one small, faithful act of noticing.
Peace,
Sarah
Kim, Kim, Kim. Your story, so real, condensed into that beautiful haiku. I needed a cry this morning…
Thank you for sharing this story, Kim. I love how the haiku sums up exactly what your whole prose poem describes. It’s crazy how only 3 lines and 17 syllables can do that and pay respect to what your husband notices and the man.
Stunning, Kim. Gorgeous. Also, necessary in a time in history where our narratives seem amok as the Orcs & Slytherins have found themselves emboldened once again. The story, followed by the haiku, what’s at our feet and what’s flying above, is an image I’m carrying with me today (and such a strategy could possibly be a poem prompt for the future). Powerful.
This is such a beautiful small moment, that could have easily gone unnoticed, but you, as a writer, noticed and created a beautiful poem out of it.
Kim, this is beautiful, so visual— it’s as if you’ve elevated the haibun to a kind of modern triptych-haibun, capturing three connected stories, and rendering three distinct visions,,,in the center the old man in his ill-fitting sweatpants and orthopedic sandals but superimposed as a soldier marching…on left panel the harried mother and crying child..and on the right panel the couple who noticed. Just beautiful.
Ann, thank you for hosting today and bringing us a reminder of how to address a “universe on fire.”
We start the week. It could be a new look. A fresh start to the first of a five-day stretch. I often empathize with a case of the Mondays. We wake to our coffee, as usual. Our routine helps. Living and moving cliches–one-day-at-a-time. Early-morning sirens make our dog howl. That can’t be good. Someone didn’t wake for a new week. Yet we continue. We welcome this present.
unique, innovate
Monday feels, new emotions
back to business blues
Stefani,
What a succinct and sharp way of capturing the Monday anticipation and the week. Wonderful!
Stefani,
Your poem holds that quiet tension of beginning again: the coffee, the routine, the sirens reminding us life is still happening alongside us. I love how “Monday feels” lands as both weary and awake, and that ending haiku turns it into something soft, grounded, and almost accepting.
I so wonder if those Monday feels and business blues ever go away.
Sarah
Stefani, just yesterday I mentioned to my husband my amazement that no matter how hard we try to be present to the moment, routine distracts us. I, too, have a dog who howls— in the beginning it spooked me but now it’s a reminder of unknown lives living simultaneously, A true moment of clarity…and then back to business blues…
Stefani, what a way to appreciate a case of the Mondays – – by counting the blessings of life and being here with each other – – even on Monday.
Ann, I had a peace plant from my Grannie’s funeral for many years. Her name was Lillie and whenever I saw the plant, I would think Peace, Lillie. “In a universe on fire…” we crave peace more than ever. Will we ever learn to live peaceably with one another?? Much food for thought. Thank you for this rich, poignant haibun and the powerful inspiration today.
She Was a Good Rat
I am teaching second-graders how to write haiku. They’re captivated by the syllables, rhythmically chanting while tapping their fingers, five, seven, five. They have challenged me to write a poem about hair falling from the sky (!!) and somehow I manage it (orange angel hair that ended up in the Christmas tree topper of my 1970s childhood; my mother said not to touch it because it can cut you and to this day I wonder why angel hair is sharp enough to slice humans. The real question is whether it’s angel hair or plain old fiberglass. This is poetry; I’m sticking with the former). Then I challenge the kids: What about haiku for a rat that died? For a split second, stillness. Big eyes. Blinking. She was a good rat, I say…and immediately the little fingers come out. The syllabic chanting, the instantaneous revision, giggling, for isn’t poetry all about the unexpectedness of things? I do not tell them why I chose this topic, that one of the school’s lab rats died that morning at home (note: these are pets; not for experiments) and that the teacher told me how: It had a tumor which burst, sending the rat into a panicked frenzy, flinging blood everywhere, and there was nothing for it but to put her (the rat) into the homemade euthanasia chamber… and…there wasn’t enough decompressed gas the first time and the rat was still breathing until the can was changed…yes, there are horrors in the world that the kids don’t need to know yet and I would, by God, keep them from experiencing them if I could. It’s enough for me to know a little living thing just left the world after such suffering and it deserves a eulogy, although, truth be told, I am the one who needs the poem…
She was a good rat
all her rat-friends wave good-bye
with little pink hands
Fran,
Your ability to retell and capture all these incredible moments in prose is simply WOW! The haibun is so sweet and tender. This is exactly what we need in this moment. Thank you!
Fran,
Oh, so good to see and feel your words today. This is such a striking piece in the way it holds the brightness of children chanting syllables alongside the quiet, unbearable knowledge you’re carrying underneath. I love how “She was a good rat” becomes both eulogy and shield, and those “little pink hands” at the end feel heartbreakingly tender.
Peace,
Sarah
Hi Fran. I have missed you and of course, what a first poem for me to read after a while. I don’t know why I read your haiku before the prose but I did. And I thought, ok. But then I read the prose and Jesus (sorry) what a story. I can’t believe this happened to the rat. It reminded me of like George Stinney’s electrocution being too small for it to work at first. And you of course not wanting to tell the children but just asking them to write something for the rat. And I’m assuming that’s what they came up with and it made me cry “little pink hands” omggg 😭 So, thank you for writing such a heartbreakingly beautiful haibun.
Franna! You have drawn me into this story of second graders and the poor rat who suffered greatly. How we want to shield our littles for as long as we can from horrors and let them write haiku about a rat that was loved. The “little pink hands” makes me tear up. And I am Not a fan of rats. Leo found a dead one on our walk last week and I couldn’t bear to look at it. He kicked it, of course, being the 7 year old boy that he is. Thanks for showing me how to make a small moment matter in a poem.
Little pink hands. Good-byes. Rat-Friends. Eulogy and cruelty handled delicately in a moment with 2nd grade haikus (I’m reminded of the family covering the t.v. in Matt de la Peña’s LOVE, as the child in pajamas stands on the chairs). Yes there are horrors in this world and you, with care, brought all of us a little grace this morning. Phew.
Ok Fran, I can honestly say that crying for a rat was never on my bingo card..,and yet here I am, teary eyed…for the loss of a good rat and for her rat friends waving good-bye with little pink hands (such a perfect haiku) or am I moved by the innocence of children and the beauty of a teacher sensitive enough to recognize a living thing just left the world after such suffering and that there are horrors in the world that kids don’t need to know yet.
Fran, I am so, so glad you are here today. I have missed your writing voice and the always amazingness of your storytelling. Today’s is just that. The setting of second-graders and angel hair and all the innocence and big eyes and finger counting against the decompressed gas and homemade euthanasia chambers that don’t quite work along with hair sharp enough to slice shows us the reality of the world. And brings us to the much needed and simplified poem that reminds us of the good.
Fran, gracious goodness alive! That poor good little rat friend suffered such a horrendous end. But what a balm for little hurting hearts: a lesson in how poetry heals our grief, gives us the images of tiny pink hands waving goodbye to a rat friend, a heavenly sendoff of the very best kind. Leave it to you to give us this peace. And I love the Peace, Lillie!
When the world is on fire, the atmosphere so conflagrant that one small word ignites and lifts into the breeze only to land inches, feet, miles away, the perfect tinder to burn down the world anew, that, that is when one drops a pebble into the water, watching small ripples begin before continuously expanding outward in concentric circles. Mesmerizing as a fire to witness, yet more soothing, for once the ripples reach their destination, they are returned, just as gently, given back only to bounce and ripple outward once more.
the ripple effect
each small kindness toward others
makes a broad impact
(Ann, the decision to spread kindness into the world, making one small area safer, more beautiful, a place of sanctuary, in hopes of expanding peace seems ever so important now. I have been working toward this goal daily, dropping seeds in hopes they flourish. Knowing that you are also focusing on peace within our world got me thinking of the ripple effect that I use in our social justice unit to show students how one act can change the world. Your poem is a beautiful offering of how finding a place for peace is that one small step.)
Beautifully rendered, Jennifer, this contrast of fire and water, anger and kindness. A reminder that kindness and peace begin with “me.”
Jennifer,
This is such a valuable insight coupled with advocacy for justice. I appreciate how you used the ripples as a metaphor within your poem to spread kindness juxtaposed with the contrast of fire. I also love the imagery of the concentric circles —- it adds to the ripple effect! Thank you.
Jennifer,
I love hearing about your social justice unit and am also thinking about the group you lead in your church community for healing. So grateful for your ripple-effect.
This poem is so beautifully balanced between urgency and calm: the fire and then the water arriving like a breath the body needed. I love how “one drops a pebble into the water” shifts everything into care, and that ending haiku makes kindness feel both small and endlessly expanding at the same time.
Peace,
Sarah
The cause and effect of Fire and Water here is so well described. I love the imagery – I can see this happening literally and figuratively.
Go more gently into the dark night comes to mind as I read your poem that takes fire and water on a metaphorical journey. I pray every day for the ripple of kindness to destroy the fire of hatred.
Jennifer, I like the way you juxtapose fire and water, highlighting that a ripple of water is as mesmerizing as fire to witness, yet more soothing. I need to hold that in my heart…
Jennifer, ripples reverberate through the soul, as does your poem today, reminding us of impact – – the constant, never-ending effects of action. Beautiful!
Thanks for the lovely prompt and form.
Kevin
These woods we know so well seem empty as we walk. I let her off the leash and now she is the lead, and I am the follower. I sense the river, swollen now with the early Spring rains and late Winter melt. She looks back, constantly, to make sure I am with her, and I am, with her, moving forward, noticing but never seeing the orchestra tumbling towards some distant sea.
A river roars through,
out of eyesight but still, there,
a voice, shouting: time
Kevin, I love the peace in this moment, the roaring a backdrop to the interaction between you and your dog. Your description of the river as an orchestra tumbling toward the sea is so beautifully chosen, a prelude to the haiku that follows.
So majestic, Kevin – the woods, the dog, the sea, and time.
Kevin,
This is so quietly powerful in the way it lets the pup become the guide and the speaker become the one learning to follow, step by step, into something larger than what can be seen. I love “noticing but never seeing the orchestra tumbling towards some distant sea”—it holds that beautiful tension between presence and mystery, and the ending haiku lands like a clear, inevitable truth moving through everything.
Sarah
I love the use of melt as a noun here: “ I sense the river, swollen now with the early Spring rains and late Winter melt.” I had to read it a couple times. You describe the thereness mixed with the unseeing of the river so well.
Your poem makes me think of Tom Ryan’s book Following Atticus. What a beautiful thing: a dog off-leash, running ahead.
Kevin, this is quiet and simple and having just read Jennifer’s poem, further reminds me of the comfort of the river…the orchestra tumbling towards some distance sea. What a beautiful line!
Anne, what a beautiful haibun. I love your description of organization and then distillation. That makes so much sense to me. Of course the Peace Plant was hoping for a home in the heart of a poet…of course. Thank you for hosting today. I hope to be back later with some writing.