Kerouac and Lucy

She read On the Road when she was heading off it. After a year of backpacking Lucy was killing time on some unspectacular Thai beach, waiting for the plane ride home. At the hostel she had swapped Pride and Prejudice for a battered copy of Kerouac's novel, hunkered down on a mile of fine, white sand and got her some of that crazy beat prose. It made for a satisfying homecoming.

Ten years on, Kerouac's rambling account of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty's hedonistic journeys across America were intimately associated with lashings of her own travel nostalgia.

still in the pages -
a Bangkok bus ticket
bookmark

Standing in the poetry section of her local bookstore, Lucy was cradling Kerouac's Book of Haikus between her hands. The pages had been pre-roughened to appeal to tactile readers. It was square and weighty; and for her, it combined an age old passion for travel with a new found love - haiku.

Once home, blanket around her shoulders, steaming cup of sweetened tea on the window sill, she began to read.

digging through
gran’s old jewellery -
small fingers

She put the book down and looked up.

Modern Tanka & Haibun Prose, Issue 1, Summer 2009