Independence Day
Amy Whitcomb
 

It was half a year ago when I last saw fireworks. When we stood in no special place and treated each other no special way and I said I felt so relieved, so freed, that I didn't have to make plans or meet expectations. It felt like the first time in ages that New Year's Eve belonged to me.

blue moon-
the shine of things
that seem impossible

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July and I will see fireworks again, this time alone. Last year on this date, when we were hiking among old growth and alpine lakes, I declared it Interdependence Day, in recognition of the systems that collide, overlap each other, explode all around us.

while we sleep
coming apart at the seams
the Silver Divide

As you go your way and I go mine, the charge of us settles, the way a sparkler reaches the end of its stick, with only the memory of being burnt in the dark between us.

the night hot
with dreams ablaze

Amy Whitcomb became a member of the Central Valley Haiku Club in summer 2005. Since then, her haiku and related forms have been published in Modern Haiku, Frogpond, The Heron's Nest, and Simply Haiku. Other poems have appeared in Rattlesnake Review, Sacramento News and Review, The Yolo Crow, and on Medusa's Kitchen blogspot. Amy is originally from the Northeast but is currently living in the Bay Area of California while attending graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley.

Copyright 2007: Simply Haiku