Happy New Year, Poets. Welcome to the first dVerse prompt of 2026—Haibun Monday 1/5/2026! I am your host, Frank Tassone. Today, let’s talk about Epiphany!

A cursory definition of the word epiphany is “a moment of sudden revelation or insight.” In the Christian tradition, the Epiphany is the revelation of the Christ Child to the wider world, symbolized by the visit of the 3 Magi (or kings) as recounted in the Gospel of Matthew. The Catholic Church commemorates this event as the Feast of the Epiphany, held every January 6^th, 12 days after Christmas Day.

Nevertheless, one doesn’t need to adhere to Christian dogma to appreciate Epiphany as a moment of sudden clarity or enlightenment. & a new year may open us to the state of mind in which such an epiphany is possible.

Consider how these poets bear witness to Epiphany:

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Yvonne Cabalona

Epiphany

New school year, second grade, Ms. Jue’s class:  I bring my favorite little Golden Book, Lady and the Tramp, for that morning’s show and tell. After our lessons begin, we are told we can play with those items if our work is finished and returned within a specific amount of time. Our heads bend eagerly toward the assignments in front of us, the classroom quiet except for the occasional scraping of chairs back and forth against the floor—sure signs of classmates seeking rewards after the conclusion of their tasks. Scribbling faster, I pause to watch an unfamiliar little boy walk along side of the display table, look over each prize, and then reach for my book. Indignant, I rush to him, snatch the treasure from his hands and vehemently declare ownership of it. His question and expression of hurt, however, humbles my possessiveness:  “But I thought you brought it to share?” Silent, I press the book back into his hands and return to my desk shame-faced.

at the chalkboard,
his small fingers sketching
a dog’s ears

Courtesy of Contemporary Haibun, American Haibun and Haiga, 2002, Vol. 3

 David Cobb

Down Epiphany Way

In Berlin on a late summer’s day the Epiphanienweg leads to a cemetery called Luisenfriedhof. I am coming to see you, Corporal Gabler. My second visit. After fifty years.

Monuments face each other across the gravel path, so that the acute morning sun, creating a pattern of serried shadows, strikes the blank rears of those on my left, while  lighting up the inscribed faces of those on my right.

The place is full of flowers and German widows. The widows stare at me, they tend graves, some of them recording loved ones born in the very year you died. Almost-old-comrade in the enemy’s army, on the last day of the war you had a Russian bullet in the head, in the street outside your home, wearing your civvies. And me now, obligated to bring you the news of your widow, she too lying at peace, though in a corner of some English field.

Weren’t we all three confirmed Romantics? The triangle has to be closed.

The sun is very warm today and, traversing row after row of tombstones, I can’t find you anywhere. As I speak to you, Wo steckst du denn?, I wonder if it’s in order to call you du. We were never properly introduced, we never even spoke. Just I stood beside her at the grave, holding a trowel that had lost its shape, while she laid flowers on you. That day, also in summer.

Rest, we all wished you rest, thinking of peace for  ever. Ewige Ruh’. But now, fifty years on, when I ask the gardener with a watering can in his hand where you might be concealed, he shakes his head, tells me ñ and I know he means help—to ask at the office. A plot for Gabler? Maybe his tenure …?

‘Rest in Peace’—
and just nearby a plaque,
‘Lease expired.’

I cannot face the office, go to the Lietzenseepark instead, where “the public are requested to respect the local residents’ need of quietness.” A Turkish family are spreading out a picnic, a Chinese woman goes through the unhurried postures of Tai-Chi, weeping willows touch the surface of the lake. It is still beautiful, do you remember the tulips, Liebchen? I think of sitting down in Babylon and weeping, and in that moment a faint shower begins.

a sound I can’t hear
the consciousness of leaves
receiving rain . . .

Courtesy of Contemporary Haibun, American Haibun and Haiga, 2002, Vol. 3

Ken Jones

Epiphany

“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

T.S. Eliot – The Rock

The open door of the shabby little Hotel de la Gare. The municipal street washer has just clattered over the cobbles, freshening the air before the sun gets up. On their way to work, the locals drop in for a  petit noir or a shot of something stronger. Hands are briefly shaken all round. Even the solitary touriste anglais, dunking his croissant in his bowl of coffee. No one says much. A new and unrepeatable day is on its way.

Morning brightness
sipping
coffee’s bitter edge

Listlessly I flip the bible paper pages of the Guide Bleue. Things to see and do.  Something significant might be missed. You never know.

Among the natives of the town were Pierre Magnol (1638-1715), who conceived the idea of plant classification; and A J Balard (1802-1876) who discovered bromine in 1826.

The cathedral dates mainly from the 13C (transepts). Some good 14C glass is preserved, together with murals of 1347 in some chapels. The 14C cloister contains some sculptural fragments.

Enough! Enough! I thrust guide book and street plan firmly back into my travelling bag and close the zip. Now a mere flâneur, I stroll round the town gallery again; always the same favourites. Chewing their cud, in their heavy gilt frame, Albert Cuyp’s sunlit cows. After the coach tours have departed, I sneak into the cathedral.

In the cage of stone and glass
the long echo
of a dropped camera

Come the evening, off to a favourite brasserie for a biere blonde and badinage with the barmaid. En route, there is a certain ancient door, this time unlocked.

Chapel of the Black Penitants
a lonely Christ
hangs in his silence

In the dim light I find a stone seat and sit with him in the cold.

Next day to the one town on the railway that gets scarcely a mention in the guide. As soon as I get off a gritty metallic tang catches my throat. And there’s no tourist office. Only the huge, ugly church of an industrial Christianity. The interior shelters a dozen or more migrant families.

Beneath the stony gaze of saints
homeless
on a mosaic floor

Outside, among pollarded plane-trees, a travelling fair is in full swing.

A merry-go-round
of painted horses
up-and-down we go

Courtesy of Western Chan Fellowship CIO

How about you? What moments of revelation or insight have you experienced? What enlightenment has an epiphany brought you? Now is your opportunity to bear witness to it! Write a haibun in which you allude to Epiphany, however you understand it.

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 that references Epiphany.
• 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!