It is without doubt one of the highlights of my year: to sit down with all four editions of the Wales Haiku Journal, and take time to choose ten powerful, poignant poems from each season to submit to the Haiku Foundation Touchstone Awards.
This year I'd like to share these with you, with the aim of giving such evocative pieces another opportunity to be read, to be thought about, to be delighted in.
Here are the haiku chosen...
Winter
first light
the kangaroo’s yawn
holds the sun
Marilyn Humbert
meadow wind—
this urge of becoming
a butterfly
Hifsa Ashraf
snow on the rice paddy
the crow has gained
the world
Patrick Sweeney
meditation deepening into a hoopoe's song
Srini
the last hundred butterflies white lie
Aidan Castle
3D printing sunlight in the forest
Tony Williams
Teenage laughter cornstalks swaying behind the barn
Danny Daw
after all the leaves have fallen pregnant earth
Marilyn Fleming
following the footsteps
of a polar bear
winter dream
John Han
a late bloom
on the briar rose
full moon
Bri Bruce
Spring
snow melt
I enter a year
of seconds
Bisshie
morning mist
the softness of
pussy willow
Farah Ali
spring lake
a beaver's tail
strikes the sun
Marilyn Ashbaugh
zazen...
a lotus rises
above the mud
Neena Singh
rain-washed air
the empty clothesline
dripping clouds
Lesley Anne Swanson
Spring blizzard
father retells
my birth story
Jenn Ryan-Jauregui
in the eyes
of the strung-up fish
island sunrise
Bryan Rickert
coastal walk
the tumult of the sea
in my son’s eyes
Adele Evershed
gleaning
the stubble field
evening light
Helen Ogden
in praise
of darkness –
fireflies
Alvin Cruz
SUMMER
morning dream ----
the mountain
kissing the moon
Manoj Sharma
forest walk
the phoenix stirring
within me
Antoinette Cheung
clear sky
the way you hold
my hand
Adrian Bouter
sunshine
on the nape of my neck
my father’s hand
Tate Lewis-Carroll
deep down in the center
of a thistle bud—
summer
Laurie Morrissey
Summer woods
I gain admission
as a child
Millicent Bee
pocked red dust in the sockets of the sheep’s skull the rain
Mark Miller
their campfire’s smoke
blends with ours...
canopy of stars
Lee Hudspeth
wolfpack—
a freight train surges
into the night
Aiden Castle
a dove disappears
in the heat shimmer
summer breakup
David Watts
AUTUMN
summer stillness
a fisherman taps his cane
across the creek
Glenn Coats
September rain...
by the hedge the soft patter
of sheep
Dorothy Burrows
fresh drilled earth...
more fine lines waiting
to be written
Dorothy Burrows
just words...
slipping peaches
from their skins
Tony Williams
where you try
to ease my mind
wild mussels
Adrian Bouter
distant lightning—
the heron
switches legs
Aiden Castle
rain glistening
on the curl of an oak leaf
my son drives off
Thomas Festa
the fwop
of a pulled cork
hay bale
Bill Cooper
dry desert waterfall
my thoughts
exactly
Lee Hudspeth
holding
the sunset still
his last poem
John Pappas