Hello, this is Frank Hubeny. The topic for the haibun today is “pleasantly surprised”. We have done a similar theme of the unexpected five years ago with ManicDoaily’s “Unexpected Poetics”: https://dversepoets.com/2012/09/22/unexpected-poetics/

What is a haibun? A haibun is a combination of a prose section and a haiku. Put them together and you have a haibun.

When I first wrote a haibun a year ago I was puzzled that people called this “poetry”. It looked to me like prose with a haiku at the end. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the form. It broke me out of my expectations of what I could be writing. Since then I’ve used it as a start into writing flash fiction.

For this prompt let’s limit the prose part to roughly 200 words. This word-limit will hopefully increase the chance that readers will read more carefully what we have written.

For those new to participating at dVerse there is a Mister Linky. It will be active for one week. Click on it. This opens a page where you can enter your name and the link to your blog post. When you do that your post will join a list containing other posts. Check your link to make sure it works as you expected. If not, let me know in the comment section below and I will try to fix it.

For those who aren’t familiar with what to do with that list of perhaps 20 other links, I recommend being open to being pleasantly surprised by what you’ll see. Click on the links and add comments as you feel appropriate. Refresh the page over the coming week to see what is new and repeat being pleasantly surprised.