While the fire roared high, I didn’t notice the shadows.
harvest moon
But now, as another log collapses, sparks fly everywhere like tiny, passing ghosts. The tale the old woman tells is different this year, too, and at the end of the story, as the fire begins to die, she casts long shadows as if her bent frame might straighten up and become once again the body of a goddess.
the seeds of tomorrow
But it is autumn, when all things must die, and surely my imagination is playing tricks on me.
still waiting for spring
is a retired registered nurse who enjoys reading, writing, painting, and sculpting. Currently working on a novel, she is the author of Blue Dragonfly (Blue Willow Publishing, 2017), a collection of haiku and tanka. She and her husband, Robert Michael Drouilhet, co-authored Lighting a Path: 100 Haiku (Blue Willow Publishing, 2014).
Her writing has also appeared in such venues as Atlas Poetica; cattails; Golden Haiku; Modern Haiku; NeverEnding Story; the Tanka Society of America’s journal, Ribbons; and in the anthology Poetry as Consciousness: Haiku Forests, Space of Mind, and an Ethics of Freedom (Keibunsha, Co. LTD, 2018). She has won several awards, including among others, first place in the Tanka Time division of the 62nd Annual Tennessee Poetry Contest, an Honorable Mention in the Sanford Goldstein Tanka Contest in 2020, and a Sakura award in the 2012 Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational.
Rebecca and her husband live in Picayune, Mississippi, in the Deep South region. They have four grown sons and many grandchildren.
