This is (thus far) the first poem in my Chestnut Ridge manuscript as well as the shortest one. It also the first haiku I have written for about a million years, though of course it is a faulty example because, for tragicomedy's sake, it required an extra line. Still, I think there's something to be said for a project in which researching bills of sale dragged me into borrowing a poetic form that I essentially dislike.

Wartime Prosperity

                        1744

Dawn Potter

F^r the Beaver-pelt

The French-man payd 1 Bullit

Wh^ch the Shawnee-man

Return^d

[first published in Hawk & Handsaw, issue 5 (2012)]