talk of rain
the first drop hits
my lower lip
the well too full
for empty words to echo
Note: This is a tan renga by Jennifer Hambrick and Brad Bennett.
Published by
Jennifer Hambrick
A four-time Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Jennifer Hambrick won the 2020 Sheila-Na-Gig Pres Poetry Prize, won First Place in the 2018 Haiku Society of America's Haibun Award Competition, won First Place in the 2021 Martin Lucas Haiku Competition, and authored the collections In the High Weeds, winner of the Stevens Manuscript Award from the National Federation of State Poetry Societies; Joyride (Red Moon Press), winner of the Marianne Bluger Book Award from Haiku Canada; and Unscathed (NightBallet Press). She has won numerous other awards for her work, which has been published in The Columbia Review, The American Journal of Poetry, The Santa Clara Review, Maryland Literary Review, POEM, the Red Moon Press haiku and contemporary haibun anthologies, Modern Haiku Press’ Haiku 20xx anthologies of “Notable Ku,” Modern Haiku, The Heron’s Nest, Mayfly, Frogpond, Contemporary Haibun Online, and in dozens of other journals and invited anthologies worldwide. A classical musician and public radio broadcaster and multimedia producer, Jennifer Hambrick lives in Columbus. View all posts by Jennifer Hambrick
Very nice, Jennifer and Brad! I like the connections between the raindrop & the full well, and the talk & the words. The poem starts off sensual and ends full of emotion.
I enjoyed this Jennifer and Brad–especially the raindrop/full well.
my umbrella drips
pacing nature's tempo song
Thanks so much, Mary. Brad Bennett wrote the haiku, and I wrote the final two-line capping verse.
Thank you, Mary Jo! In writing the final two-line capping verse to Brad’s haiku, I wanted to take the “talk of rain” out of the superficial realm of empty weather chat and really plumb the emotions of that metaphor. The drop of rain that hits the “lower lip” in Brad’s haiku struck me as the first drop in a storm of words, a flood of emotions to come. To me, all that emotion was latent in the sensory imagery of the haiku.