Ikebana Lessons
When I was a child, I attended ikebana lessons. I have forgotten most of what I learnt there. I remember how we posed for the local newspaper. I have my flower arrangement right there in the photo, frozen in time, the way real flowers can never be. Our teacher used to say there’s beauty in imperfection, that I remember. She tried to teach us how to remove anything that was unnecessary from our arrangement. That was a hard lesson for us to learn. I remember how just three flowers can tell a story. The tallest one is your subject, the middle one is the object. I don’t remember the name of the shortest flower. I have never been much good at gardening. Yet, I admire flowers and how they grow, imperfectly and simply, how they arrange themselves effortlessly into a story each time.
The tallest flower
is the subject. The other
two tell the story.
The haibun is an appropriate form for a poem about ikebana.
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