#297: Front Yard Haibun

Mid April, that Japanese maple explodes first with leaves and the giant oak trees follow its little footsteps a few weeks later. It all happens at once. Most years no one sees it. One day there are no leaves. Next day a million leaves. The grass greens. There’s a hammock sometimes to nap in and those darn squirrels are at the bird feeders at all hours. In the distance there, beyond the road, there used to be four solitary homes, also covered in green. They were also hard to see, hiding, blending in as if they belonged there. In this old photo, the roofline of one juts out from under the greenery. But while the blooming of the front yard appears to occur overnight, the disappearing of old homes, rentals, the removal of all that vegetation, and the building of new roads, new lines for water, sewer, gas, and electricity, and thirty-two new houses, these things take years, so that, without photographic evidence, it is hard to remember or imagine how different things used to be in those greener, quieter days.

A story erased
so that new ones can replace
and then germinate.