A New Bird feeder
By Kathabela Wilson
Pasadena, California, USA
a new bird feeder
to inspire us
bluebirds
cardinals, mourning doves
breaking bread together
Sometimes
By Kathabela Wilson
Pasadena, California, USA
sometimes
sometimes
we don’t know
what we’ve sown
in the minds of infants
the turmoil we can’t control
Planting Seeds
Kathabela Wilson – Pasadena, California, USA (kw)
Jackie Chou – Pico Rivera, California, USA (jc)
Sigrid Saradunn – Bar Harbor, Maine, USA (ss)
a dark side
and a sunlit space
in the minds
of our new generation how
to nourish their best inclinations (kw)
edible seeds
add texture to the flesh
of the dragon fruit
if only he could see
past my spiky exterior (jc)
learning
to choose peace
at leadership camp
Irish teens room with
Israelis and Palestinians (ss)
sometimes
we don’t know
what we’ve sown
in the minds of infants
the turmoil we can’t control (kw)
on the border
I drop seeds
to both sides
sunflowers and poppies
watering them with tears (kw)
leaving the shells
of her sunflower seeds
over the table
what example was mom
planting in me (jc)
Thanksgiving in June
celebrating Seeds of Peace
sharing a common meal
strangers now friends
with similar feelings (ss)
a new birdfeeder
to inspire us
bluebirds
cardinals, mourning doves
breaking bread together (kw)
freighter
to America
they built her a swing
my mother at 16
in love with the new world (kw)
our front lawn
covered with dandelions
in spring
if only my father could see
my blossoming poems (jc)
The Green
By Kathabela Wilson
Pasadena, California, USA
It was a tree, becomes a song, a table, leaf after leaf, opening. We sit around its absence as it floats on memory. Shapeshifter becomes dreamcatcher, an escape hatch, small carved windmills turning very fast. We pull up small stumps polished clean.
congress of earthlings
considering the revival
of green
we fall asleep
in different languages
First Place – Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Dwarf Stars Award, 2018.
First published in the Glass Lyre Press anthology, Carrying the Branch – Poets in Search of Peace.
Feather Dusting
By Tish Davis
Concord Township, Ohio, USA
Fireflies
Light beamers
Never tell
Story-keepers
Youthful frolic
Moon minors
Memory flickers
Old-timers
Keepsake lanterns
Summer stars
Always released
From these glass jars
Night Paddling
By Tish Davis
Concord Township, Ohio, USA
I show my son how to tie up the food pack. “It keeps the bears away.” He carries me through the darkness to the lake’s edge where my husband is waiting with the canoe. The last time I was in the Boundary Waters I was the teenager. Now I must ride in the center of the boat. My doctor advised against this trip and told me not to expect remission from the disease that is consuming my body.
Paddles pull us forward away from the pines and into starlight. Here the moon dissolves into the lake. I take a metal cup out of the pouch and dip it into the water.
planetarium
an operator
freezes the sky
First published in Haibun Today, May 9, 2008
Night Heron
By Theresa A. Cancro
Wilmington, Delaware, USA
small silence –
a night heron ensnared
in fishing wire
First published in Plum Tree Tavern, 2015
Landfill Overflow
By Theresa A. Cancro
Wilmington, Delaware, USA
landfill overflow . . .
a praying mantis
bows its head
A version of this haiku was originally published in The Weekly Avocet, #508, August 28, 2022
Manatee
By Theresa A. Cancro
Wilmington, Delaware, USA
crescent moon –
a scarred manatee
nurses her calf
First published in Every Chicken, Cow, Fish and Frog: Animal Rights Haiku, Robert Epstein and Miriam Wald, editors (Kindle edition), 2017
Hunter Moon
By R. Suresh babu
Chikmagalur, Karnataka, India
hunter moon
a rhino
without his horn
From a Sphere
By Diana Webb
Leatherhead, Surrey, UK
Sylvie is doing her English homework. She skims through ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ by the poet John Keats and reads the final line aloud, ” ‘ Fled is that music – Do I wake or sleep?’ ” She reads it again and again. She loves the poet’s voice and writes a haiku:
echoes
just echoes
notes from a dream
Her mother tells her the writer from the Romantic movement stayed for a few days near their home, just over a hundred years ago. While there, he wrote in a letter that he could take part in the existence of a bird and asserted, ‘nothing startles me beyond the Moment’.
“I’ll never hear that bird for a moment “says her fourteen-year-old daughter. “Our teacher says it may soon be extinct. So perhaps the poet was psychic when he wrote those lines and especially this one, ‘No hungry generations tread thee down'”
She takes a deep breath and writes another haiku.
marching for greed
in dust underfoot
music of stardust
T Minus 10
By Richard Grahn
Evanston, Illinois, USA
Spaceman, always looking up, a compass with no needle, lost it shooting up.
Always shy a half-a-moon, he’s off to Heaven to file a complaint—
too many burned-out stars, more every day;
got to get to Heaven . . . make a few changes.
soup kitchen steps
for a pillow
his last night on Earth
~
Failed Haiku Issue 86
When you take sides
By Tazeen Fatma
Karnataka, India
A woman sits on rubble, her crimson eyes staring into yours. No one is left to grieve in another neighborhood. You have unknowingly cracked a few knuckles, picked up a dagger, and destroyed lives counting tens, hundreds, and thousands…
In trying to teach them a lesson, you’ve instilled fear and thereby infused terror in someone, somewhere. Politically, you struggle to define it in a way such that your bloodied hands are stain-free. The sun sets yet again but the night sky lights up every now and then. Many have lost their tomorrow, others wake up to a bleak one. The air still smells red.
tattered tatreez—
how beautiful it once was
Tipping Point
By Jenny Ward Angyal
Gibsonville, North Carolina, USA
diving
into the cold depths
of fear . . .
until I remember
each wave is made of water
Gaia burning—
and yet
one dewdrop
magnifies the glory
of a beetle’s burnished wing
my bequest
to the seventh generation—
memories
of the deep green eden
your ancestors once knew
one by one
I drop these words
into a well—
bottomless,
brimming with stars
~Ribbons 17:3, Fall 2021
Manifesto
By Jenny Ward Angyal
Gibsonville, North Carolina, USA
jack
in his woodland pulpit
preaches . . .
the right of the rain
to nourish the oak
the right of the leaf
to capture the light,
to grow
a forest hostelry
for a myriad of lives
the right
of the tree frog
to cling to the tree,
singing harmonies
of moon and shadow
the right of the owl
to hunt the mouse,
the right
of the mouse to hide . . .
the rhythm of their hearts
the right
of a woman to kneel
by the creek
on its way to the sea,
grieving this bloodroot world
~Drifting Sands Haibun 17, September 2022
Gaia
by Jenny Ward Angyal
Gibsonville, North Carolina, USA
a boulder lies
where the glacier left it—
clear as crystal
the old crone’s memory
of fire and of ice
granite
under a thin pelt
of grass . . .
climbing the hill
her bones grow weary
paper birches
bending to sweep
the earth
she brushes a leaf
from her hem
a cedar
at the top of the knoll
riven long ago
by lightning . . .
the rain in her hair
empathy
carved deep in the bark
of a sapling . . .
gnarled fingers trace
the lines of her scars
~red lights 18:2, June 2022
Tsunami
By Padma Rajeswari
Mumbai, India
hearing the roar
in dreams
Tsunami survivor
Memoji
By Padma Rajeswari
Mumbai, India
a memoji call with dad hiding the bruises
Haiga Challenge 1 – Sankara Jayanth Sudanagunta
Sankara Jayanth Sudanagunta (Artwork)
Anju Kishore (Poem)
Anju’s Comments: To me, Sankara’s haiga feels like a song, perfectly balancing light and dark, object, text, and space. The moon is not there, but is there in the bowl. The beggar is not there, but is there in the stick. Want is in the darkness, and hope is in the light. There is a dream softly taking wing. And we see the mother and the child.
The Haiga Challenge is just that. It challenges artists to create imagery relevant to a haikai poem supplied by one of The Abstractaphy Initiative’s contributing poets. In this, the inaugural issue of the challenge, Anju Kishore supplied the poem and selected two of the images she felt best captured the essence of her poem. She also invited the editor to pick one poem as an editor’s choice. You can see all the selected poems and commentary here: Haiga Challenge 1 Results
Haiga Challenge 1 – Marilyn Ashbaugh
Marilyn Ashbaugh (Artwork)
Anju Kishore (poem)
Editor’s Comments: This haiga spoke to me in that the discarded eggshell not only conjures the image of a half-moon but it also speaks to the uncertainty of day-to-day existence for those living in poverty. Eggs go good with pancakes but like the story of the beggar, this one is hollow and lacking in sustenance. The lines between the real and the unreal are blurred by the story. The child goes hungry, but Mother feeds its imagination.
The Haiga Challenge is just that. It challenges artists to create imagery relevant to a haikai poem supplied by one of The Abstractaphy Initiative’s contributing poets. In this, the inaugural issue of the challenge, Anju Kishore supplied the poem and selected two of the images she felt best captured the essence of her poem. She also invited the editor to pick one poem as an editor’s choice. You can see all the selected poems and commentary here: Haiga Challenge 1 Results