As my daughter feeds her horse, I step out of the car to the sound of a jet soaring overhead. I’ve known only the quiet of this place, and the occasional neighs, but now the flight path cuts a huge swath of sky.

During my children’s early years, the planes flew from west to east. I would lift my son and daughter as high as I could, as if flying objects were so easy to touch. Now, as they try out their new wings, I wish them a soft landing.

Today, a jet travels east to west, but childhood flies only one way.

forget-me-knots 
the last time we hug 
in daylight 

fleshing out 
our shadows 

with silence 

Peter Jastermsky

is an award-winning cherita poet, a Best of the Net and Dwarf Star nominee, and the author of seven books of haiku-based writing. Titles include Steel Cut Moon (Cholla Needles Press, 2019), and three from Yavanika Press: No Velcro Here (2019), The Silence We Came For (2020), and Fingerbone Sky (2021). His short-form writing has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Failed Haiku, Haibun Today, KYSO Flash, MacQueen’s Quinterly, The Aurorean, and The Cherita among others.

In 2017, Peter invented a new haiku-centered linked form called “split sequence.” His recent book, Just Dust and Stone (Velvet Dusk Publishing, May 2021), is a collection of collaborative split sequences co-written with Bryan Rickert. Peter lives with his family in the high desert of southern California, USA.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ “Love Thing”: The Allure of the Split Sequence, craft essay by Peter Jastermsky in Issue 9 of MacQ (August 2021)