Photo by Ralph Katieb 1

Had enough Arctic cold? Buried under unseasonable snow? Or, for those living south of the equator, are you enjoying an arid summer? Well, whatever your situation, you might have heard about a certain rodent prognostication. Frank Tassone, here, & honored to be your host for another Haibun Monday, where we blend prose and haiku together. Today, let’s celebrate an American, weather-predicting tradition with Northern European roots: Groundhog’s Day.

Yesterday, the United States marked another of these rodent-led prognostications. What is it all about? Well, this:

What is Groundhog Day?

In the American tradition of Groundhog Day, the nation’s groundhog prognosticators take a stance on the season ahead. If the groundhog sees his shadow, he predicts six more weeks of winter. If he doesn’t, it’s a forecast of an early spring.

Groundhog Day’s roots are in the Christian holiday Candlemas, the midway point between the winter solstice and spring equinox. Candlemas was traditionally aligned with the anticipation of planting crops, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, and seeing sunshine on the day was said to indicate winter’s return.

In Europe, people traditionally looked to bears or badgers to look for the sign of returning winter or coming spring, but when German immigrants arrived in Pennsylvania, they instead used groundhogs to make the forecast instead.

The first official Groundhog Day took place on February 2, 1887, in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. The event took up permanent residence at Gobbler’s Knob the following year.

Will Punxsutawney Phil get it right? Well, historically, he only has about a 40% success rate. Guess we’ll have to wait and see, right?

Of course, some poets have commemorated this unique holiday in their own way:

First Warm Day in a College Town

Beth Ann Fennelly 1971 –

Today is the day the first bare-chested
          runners appear, coursing down College Hill
                      as I drive to campus to teach, hard

not to stare because it’s only February 15,
          and though I now live in the South, I spent
                      my girlhood in frigid Illinois hunting Easter eggs

in snow, or trick-or-treating in the snow, an umbrella
          protecting my cardboard wings, so now it’s hard
                      not to see these taut colts as my reward, these yearlings

testing the pasture, hard as they come toward my Nissan
          not to turn my head as they pound past, hard
                      not to angle the mirror to watch them cruise

down my shoulder, too hard, really, when I await them
          like crocuses, search for their shadows as others do
                      the groundhog’s, and suddenly here they are, the boys

without shirts, how fleet of foot, how cute their buns,
          I have made it again, it is spring.  
                      Hard to recall just now that these are the torsos

of my students, or my past or future students, who every year
          grow one year younger, get one year fewer
                      of my funny jokes and hip references

to Fletch and Nirvana, which means some year if they catch me
            admiring, they won’t grin grins that make me, busted,
                      grin back–hard to know a spring will come

when I’ll have to train my eyes
          on the dash, the fuel gauge nearing empty,
                      hard to think of that spring, that

distant spring, that very very very
          (please God) distant
                      spring.

Published in Unmentionables (W. W. Norton, New York, 2008) Copyright © 2008 by Beth Ann Fennelly. Used with the permission of the author.

Anna Cates

Groundhog’s Day

I live on the edge of a small Midwestern town, beside a field, beside the woods. Sometimes, wildlife wander in through the trees from the country onto my street: rabbits in morning dew, the occasional deer clomping across the asphalt, carrion birds circling for the unlucky feral cat, and a hedgehog that comes and goes. . . .

cold sunrise
a gopher samples
February snow

Courtesy of Contemporary Haibun Online (12.4, January 2017)

white skies…
a grumpy groundhog
emerges

© Connie Marcum Wong

Courtesy of PoemHunter.com

The groundhogs have come and gone. They’ve made their predictions, for good or ill. Let’s celebrate their effort either way. Write your haibun alluding to Ground Hog’s Day.

New to haibun? The form consists of one to a few paragraphs of prose—usually written in the present tense—that evoke an experience and are often non-fictional/autobiographical. They may be preceded or followed by one or more haiku—nature-based, using a seasonal image—that complement without directly repeating what the prose stated.

New to dVerse? Here is what you do:

• Write a haibun alluding to Groundhog’s Day.
• Post it on your personal site/blog.
• Include a link back to dVerse in your post.
• Copy your link onto the Mr. Linky.
• Remember to click the small checkbox about data protection.
• Read and comment on some of your fellow poets’ work.
• Like and leave a comment below if you choose to do so.
• Have fun!