After reading the sad news that Jan Bostok had passed away, I sat down and reflected on the strange but true story of how we almost, but didn’t meet back in the early 60s. The memories came flooding in: Jan's memories, my memories, the stories we swapped and the gaps we filled in by combining those stories.
It was wonderful to finally meet Jan in person at the 4th Pacific Rim Haiku Conference,2009, in Terrigal. We’d missed crossing paths by barely a whisker, in younger years, in a very isolated community where everyone knew everyone. We shared many memories, nevertheless… a bush town, its people, a winding road that followed the old bullock trails, a river that flows into an estuary. By coincidence I’d stumbled onto the haiku path that Jan had been the pioneering spirit of in Australia for decades and as haiku editor for Stylus, Jan had encouraged me to continue.
My first contact with Jan was a time for remembering. Again, on hearing of her passing, it’s a time for remembering and for being thankful that life did somehow arrange that we would eventually meet.
incoming tide
ripples
the width of the river
(by Janice M. Bostok, from ‘Amongst the Graffiti’, Post Pressed, 2003)
- Lorin Ford
ps there are some messages on HaikuOz as well, and more expected over the next several days:
http://www.haikuoz.org/
