The penultimate day of March arrives. As usual, the third month on the calendar lives up to its reputation. Each week, the weather alternated between late spring and deep winter. With April 1^st around the corner–and its annual celebration of all things foolish–today is the day to celebrate the madness of March.

Frank Tassone, here, your host for another Haibun Monday, where we blend haiku and prose into the ultimate hybrid form. Today, let’s commemorate this madness with a tribute to the character who embodies it: Lewis Carroll’s Mad March Hare, from his Masterpiece, Alice in Wonderland.

From his first riposte to an outraged Alice, the Hare delights with his maddening nonsense. Just like March does with its fickle weather.

After more banter, he delivers this rejoinder:

“You might just as well say… that ‘I like what I get’ is the same thing as ‘I get what I like’!”

The riotous Hare continues his confusing antics to an ever more perplexed Alice. & If you’re not careful, you might start crediting the Hare with some sense!

His bewildering rhetoric exemplifies the unpredictability of March. While Spring commences (in the northern hemisphere) on the first Equinox, the weather rarely gets the memo. Daffodils pierce the ground, the first songbirds return, and even the forsythias begin to bloom. Only for yet another cold spell to further delay the vernal unfolding!

At least one poet conveys the madness of the month embodied by the Hare:

March

Elizabeth Drew Stoddard

Ho, wind of March, speed over sea,
     From mountains where the snows lie deep
     The cruel glaciers threatening creep,
And witness this, my jubilee!

Roar from the surf of boreal isles,
     Roar from the hidden, jagged steeps,
     Where the destroyer never sleeps;
Ring through the iceberg’s Gothic piles!

Voyage through space with your wild train,
     Harping its shrillest, searching tone,
     Or wailing deep its ancient moan,
And learn how impotent your reign.

Then hover by this garden bed,
     With all your willful power, behold,
     Just breaking from the leafy mould,
My little primrose lift its head!

This poem appeared in Poems (Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1895). It is in the public domain.

As March draws to a close, let’s sip a little of its departing madness. Let’s allude to the Mad March Hare!

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 alludes to the Mad March Hare
• 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!