haiku – car trip

Caroline Giles BanksMinneapolis, Minnesota, USA car triptank filled on creditfossil remains First published: contemporary haibun online 17.3 (Dec 2021)

Haiku – flight cancelations

Caroline Giles BanksMinneapolis, Minnesota, USA flight cancellations overheated birds fall from the sky   Pressing Matters: Haiku, Senryu and Haibun Poems,  Caroline Giles Banks. Minneapolis, MN: Wellington- Giles Press, 2023.

Haiku – late fall

Caroline Giles BanksMinneapolis, Minnesota, USA call it what you willlate fallroses still in bloom bottle rockets #38 (2016)

Arborcide

Caroline Giles Banks - Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA Mother maples, and their promised seedlings and saplings, filter pollutants from the air. Printed on paper—trees’ shrouds—The Associated Press reports that the U.S. Forest Service will terminate a $75 million dollar grant allocated to replace hundreds of thousands of trees lost to Hurricane Katrina, many in an historically Black community in New Orleans. By Executive Order, environmental justice initiatives that assure a percentage of climate investments go to disadvantaged communities “no longer meet government priorities.” agnostic buzz saws pulp Latin<—-> English primersDEI<—->GODS The Last Oak Leaf: Haiku, Senryu and Haibun Poems, Caroline Giles Banks. Minneapolis,…

Three Haiku by Caroline Giles Banks

Caroline Giles Banks - Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA sun and windunfundedwhat on earth? tsuri-doro #27 (May/June 2025) lilacs re-bloomspringdiscombobulates bottle rockets #52 (February 2025) the Rio Grandetrickles downto a misnomer tsuri-doro #13 (Jan/Feb 2023)

Tick-Tock

By Caroline Giles BanksMinneapolis, Minnesota, USA In 1947, when time was kept in a pocket or worn on the wrist, the artist Martyl Langsdorf was tasked by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to visually represent the idea of time running out to avert nuclear disaster. She sketched the round face of a clock not unlike those mounted on kitchen walls or placed on mantles. Using artistic license in her drawing of the clock, Martyl set the hour hand close to twelve and the minute hand at seven minutes to the hour. She chose this placement of the hands because,…

McMammoth

By Richard King Perkins IIHuntley, Illinois, USA This is a clonein the shape of a woolly mammoth.For her, Siberia isn’t a punishmentbut a falsely promised land of permafrost.Her tusks forage and digon the taigawith measured sadnessas the great slope of her backoffers a momentary ramp,a tool for climbing humansto ascend and ride atop her head.And once you control the head,you own the rest.And like our ancestors,someone will decideafter the elephant ridethat she looks absolutely delicious.

THE MOMENT

By Regina (Gina) PiroskaTasmania, Australia Exhaling, I hear the sound of my breath as I lean into the rising hush.  A breeze plays with a bit of puffy down, picks it up, twirling, a vortex along a dusty pathway.  A swallow circles the white bit of fluff that whirls this way, then that until finally, in a suspended split-second, the bird snatches the fluff, flying quickly under the eaves of the deserted bank building and deposits it into the newly-made nest. small townthe second-hand shop signsays 'cash only' 2025 - Edited from a published version 2022 (Modern Haiku (print edition) -…

Seagulls

By Regina (Gina) PiroskaTasmania, Australia seagulls gatheron the abandoned trawlera drifting cloud Published Echidna Tracks #15 

PTSD and Psalms

Katy Z. AllenWayland, Massachusetts Yah is at my right hand, I shall not falter. Maltreatment, disregard, cruelty,abuse, defilement, contaminationdo not go unnoticed,by the corporeal or the incorporeal,whether inflicted uponan individual or a people,a species or an ecosystem,an atmosphere or a planet. Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Aftereffectsaftershockscontinuefor years, decades, generations,millennia. Truth springs up from the Earth; justice looks down from heaven. As an individual,I have lived the impact.Among too many peoples,I have seen the devastation. I call to You, my Rock, do not disregard us. Regarding countless speciesI have witnessed disappearance.For ecosystems large and small,I…

Complexity

By Katy Z. AllenWayland, Massachusetts sitting by a streamenveloped in subtle autumn beautyfeeling solid ground beneathbreathing invisible life-giving airawareness awakens verdant summertime leavesconceal yellows and orangesredsmaroonsand complexity beyond measure introduced species small and largeexotic flora and faunasuppress more delicate autochthonesof many huessmall and largeand complexity beyond measure death, demolition and destructionhide and inflamegrief and feardespairdesolationand complexity beyond measure rising seas and rampaging wildfiresscreaming winds and persistent droughtovershadow and obliterate connectionto earthy soil and solid rockiron core of earthand complexity beyond measure sitting by a streamwatching beloved children at play quietlyunexpectedlytouching griefbeyond words   beyond comprehension      beyond endurance that simmers…

One October Morning

By Katy Z. AllenWayland, Massachusetts One October morning, the Merlin app on my phoneheardonly a single dark-eyed Junco.Nothing else. My earsheardcars and trucks on the road beside my house,distant heavy machinery, clanging and banging,and a chainsawnot far off.No birds. My imaginationheardthe trills and chatter of the woodland edgeduring the dawn course of spring–cedar waxings, red wing blackbirds,yellowthroats, rose-breasted grosbeaks,and more.So many birds. My imaginationheardthe silence of the woods and meadowspunctuated only by the murmuring wind in the trees,bird calls,animals scuttering in the litterand water tumbling in a rushing creek.Nothing more. My heartheardthe single Junco aching for the absent birdsand filled the…

The Gardens of Antarctica

By Robert WitmerTokyo, Japan The gardens of Antarctica breathe free. Free of the hideous white. A dense green silence remembers the blinking ice. Dewdrops heavy as stones hung about the neck. The overpowering poetry of tears. summerthe millstonegindingthe donkey First published in Sunrise in a Rabbit Hole, publication date November 3, 2025, Cyberwit.com.

Tide Ledger

By David Anson LeeBellaire, Texas, United States We keep a ledger of small losses: one slipper at the pier, two gull nests, ten breaths of air no one thought to save. The ledger rides in the pocket of a coat that remembers salt: buttons looped with a child’s braid, a coin pressed thin as a fossil. Once a year we walk the shoreline and record what the tide returns: a plastic comb, a glass bead, a photograph of a town no longer printed on any map. We bury each entry in a jar and plant a willow above it. The…

Dispatch from the Thinning

By David Anson LeeBellaire, Texas, United States They said our town still had a forest, though it clung to the highway like a frayed sleeve. At dawn the trucks came, counting trunks the way bankers count coins, and left behind a geometry of stumps the birds could not decipher. The library taped a notice to its glass: “Community Meeting. Seeds Needed.” Women arrived with seed packets folded like blessings. Children wrote tree names on scraps of paper, as if naming could mend the thinning air. We planted where runoff carved salt into the soil and hoped the roots could read…

Building a Birdhouse

Robert WitmerTokyo, Japan That stuff is for the birds, the builder says, when I point out the loss of shade where the trees would be. He is coming from a power lunch with the architect, a former tightrope walker in his father’s circus. Seems like there was a discussion about an extension to the go-kart track. Noise pollution, apparently. What about electric karts, I say, and an aviary just before the final turn? Fat chance, he says. That little hole in front, beneath the red-peaked roof, is too small for the kid’s albatross. First published in Sunrise in a Rabbit Hole, publication…

Atlas of Small Things

By David Anson LeeBellaire, Texas, United StatesWhen the last map burned,we traced new roads from thumbprints:salt in the seams,a country stitched by small hands.A child learns the coastby listening for gulls;an older woman counts orchardsthe way she once counted prayers.Every mouth carries a river’s memory:names of fish, the taste of rain.We lift the globe like a bowl,tilt it until teaspoons of lightslide into the cracked placesand teach the woundshow to flower.

Depravation Darlings

By Colin JamesMassachusetts The acronym B.L.A.H.written on the clubhouse door,because legends are human.I will follow you anywheresuitably hydrated, then demobbedin the Arizona desert.Behold The Cave Of Reason,much better than a dusty clubhouseand your mother's provincial sandwiches.The sunsets here are dramatic,my headaches and carpal tunnelsoftly pressed between cactus flowers.

October Showers

By: Regina (Gina) PiroskaTurners Beach, Tasmania, Australiaoctober showersa blackbird tugs at the wormstretchingwe prepare to join the group at a yoga retreat Published catchment edition 4 2025