When you investigate my juicy plum, when you walk the rim of my Riesling, when you buzz me, gleefully, in the middle of a nap, I try, O fly, to dig deep into the Buddha corners of my heart and find the sanctity of every living thing, though I have great difficulty with mosquitoes as well, not to mention earwigs…but I digress. In spite of your fondness for all things revolting, I want to spare you, really I do. You, with your Kafkaesque legs and eyes, even my pen you explore! Is there any place you dare not? But heed this warning, O small one: when you walk about on my paper, rubbing those questionable feet above my fresh poem, then, my inquisitive little friend, you are history.

afternoon
one fly
on the pane

—Published previously in Haibun Today (10 September 2009); appears here with poet’s permission.

Sharon Auberle,

poet and photo artist, enhances her work through various digital and/or physical applications including hand tinting, watercolor, colored pencil, and beeswax, among others. Her poetry and art have appeared in numerous print and online publications and anthologies, and her art has been featured in solo exhibits in Wisconsin and in juried exhibits in Wisconsin and Arizona. She is the winner of the 2015 Bonnie Hartman Award for Outstanding Creativity in the Miller Art Museum’s 40th Juried Annual Exhibition, and she served as Poet Laureate of Door County from 2017 to 2019.

She is the author of seven books, four of which are collaborations with other poets including two books with Jeanie Tomasko, Dovetail (Bent Paddle Press, 2017) and Sharp as Want (Little Eagle Press, 2011), and one with Ralph Murre, Wind: Where Music Was (Little Eagle Press, 2013). Auberle’s photo-art and poetry are combined in two of her books, EVErywoman (Seven Islands Press) and Crow Ink (Little Eagle Press, 2009); the title poem of the latter was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her book of poetry and old photographs entitled Saturday Nights at the Crystal Ball: A Memoir (Cross+Roads Press, 2008) is an homage to her parents.

Auberle has collaborated with poets in Australia and Vietnam for a world writing project called Conversations Across Borders and recently participated in a group of poets teaming with musicians to combine spoken word with music in a program called Words On Fire. Also available, a CD of her spoken poetry: Something After Burning.

For a potpourri of her work, spanning about ten years of photographs, poems, and other writings, please see her archived blog:
Mimi’s Golightly Cafe