As a child, the forest is pathless and wild.

nurse logs

Decades later, a primitive lane sketches deep to the forest’s heart, ending abruptly where old-growth trees are too large and the underbrush too thick. I camp at the base of a moss-covered spruce and dream that it falls.

among
the toppled trees

Today, I drive on a paved road to the visitor center. Query a ranger about the recommended highlights. Walk the quarter-mile curated path that is dotted with informational markers.

the scenes
of my life rising
all in a row

I stay on the trail and leave only footprints.

—Long-Listed Finalist in MacQ’s Cheribun Challenge #2

Kat Lehmann

is a founding co-chief editor of whiptail: journal of the single-line poem. She is a winner of the 2024 Rattle Chapbook Prize and The Haiku Foundation’s 2020 Touchstone Award for Individual Poem. Kat served as a panelist for The Haiku Foundation Touchstone Distinguished Books Award (2021-2023), and her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best of the Net. A former research biochemist, Kat explores the grandiose within tiny haiku-genre poems, the storytelling possibilities of haibun, and experimentation with single- and multi-haiku forms. She lives in Connecticut with her family.

Author’s website: https://katlehmann.weebly.com/

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Guests Kat Lehmann and Roberta Beary on “Experimental Haibun”: Episode 72 of The Poetry Space podcast by Katie Dozier and Timothy Green (2 August 2024)

⚡ MacQ Author Index lists links for two dozen of Kat’s haibun, plus two of her collaborative micro-poems with Bryan Rickert.