This week’s Haibun Monday challenge on DVerse is about Kintsugi, the Japanese art of taking the broken pieces of something and putting it back together by adding gold lacquer, creating a work of art more beautiful than before. This haibun is based on a true and fairly recent happening in my life. I almost didn’t write it but am glad that I did.
While trying to wake myself up with some coffee, filling the reservoir with water, I knock off a glass candle holder from its perch on the mahogany end table. I can see it falling, hear it clatter as it reaches the tile floor, all the pieces unevenly breaking and scattering, as from a fearsome predator. I stand still and silent for a moment. I yell for help but there is no one here. Timidly I tip-toe over the top of all these pieces and grab the vacuum, which sucks up all the tiny pieces, all the shards of what once was beautiful and useful, but was something I never paid much attention to, ungrateful, until the unused candle holder flung itself to the floor.
I wonder, even then, if there was a use for all the pieces, if they needed to be cast into oblivion, or if, like Humpty Dumpty and the king’s men, nothing could put them together again.
No longer springtime,
But summer of my life: I
Treasure all pieces.
revivedwriter 
I love how you reflect here on the shattering of the candle holder, that which holds the light, and how in your closing haiku you ‘treasure all the pieces’ :o)
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I enjoyed the phrase “summer of my life” and I’m going to repeat it to my husband the next time he claims to be “old.”
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I like your description of the candle holder falling as if it’s happening in slow motion. I also like how upon reflection, the pieces are something to treasure. Nice write.
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I love the reflection on what happens if you don’t repair… is it a lost opportunity?
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“I never paid much attention to, ungrateful, until the unused candle holder flung itself to the floor.”
The way you put those words together is delightful. It says so much about how ignorant we are and granted about certain thing until we feel it’s lose. An wonderful haiku as well. Well done!
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Sometimes it is like Humpty Dumpty, but the pieces might still be nice by themselves.
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Sometimes we don’t appreciate things in our lives until they’re broken. This was a story with food for thought. Well told.
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i ma glad you did write it too! the small things in our life point us to the bigger picture sometimes – lovely haiku
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Some things we don’t noticed or appreciate until its broken and lost altogether ~ Love your haiku ending with: I treasure all the pieces ~
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“I wonder, even then, if there was a use for all the pieces, if they needed to be cast into oblivion, or if, like Humpty Dumpty and the king’s men, nothing could put them together again.”
such a reflective piece. and then haiku wraps this up beautifully. i think indeed there is beauty in brokenness. 🙂
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The pieces of who we are make us the whole. We glue ourselves with that that is life.
Love your words and the hope in your haiku.
Anna :o]
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Lovely reverie about possibilities.
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