Haiku favorites of mine and of other poets from the 2013 NaHaiWriMo month
Dear followers and readers,
I’d like to apologize for a ‘long absence’ here. I could give you a thousand reasons but none would make up for the time that had flown by. In that flow, however, I had gathered more skies, more suns rising and setting, stars, fallen petals and laughing fishes, herons and gulls and countless sighs. And in them or because of such harvest, my haiku, tanka, haibun, and haiga have taken wing onto wind paths I couldn’t have imagined. Most of all, perhaps because I persisted, my haiku writing has grown stronger limbs with daily prompts at NaHaiWriMo (NHWM). Herewith then, like a ‘take home’ gift from a long trip are haiku by me and my choices by other poets during last year’s NHWM anniversary when founder, Michael Dylan Welch gives the daily prompt. He made us chose favorites from ours and those of other poets–these are mine, of which I hope yours, too. Thanks so much for being with me all these years and for those who simply stumbled into here, welcome!
Alegria
#04/02/13 (spice)
First off, I’d like to thank you, Michael, for NaHaiWriMo, and for this year’s month, your concrete prompts that are so everyday, it was a challenge yet a joy to see them with a new eye. Second, I’d like to say , “Many thanks, Pamela and Carole for choosing one each of my haiku for your favorite!!” Third, I wish to thank the many poets, a lot of them I’ve written with a haiku daily here (except for a few weeks that I couldn’t) for the past three years, flourishing in our community. Such joy to find not just a few of yours that resonate, nay, sun-splash on my way everyday. I’ve learned so much about and from you.
And now because I’m always overwhelmed and overjoyed, I cannot limit my choices to just one, of course, except for mine. But I have gathered those of others as if they were mine, too! Indeed, as in one of the resources you posted here, Michael, haiku binds because we open up ourselves to and for its lines. What greater bind is there than one that’s straight from one’s heart (spirit) and into another’s and into one’s own from another’s.
A favorite from mine though there’s about a dozen in my shortlist!
cardamom
in curry rice, a past
she cracks open
Of others and like the process for mine, dozens in my shortlist!
orange blossom –
lifting her burqa
just enough
Eider Green
sleepless . .
the path from my bed
to the Pleiades
Sandi Pray
the secret door
to grandpa’s room
in grandma’s closet
wild roses
Stevie Strang
garage sale
my past fills
a stranger’s car
Michele Harvey
closet
my rebellion taped inside
a cardboard box
Scott Abeles
father’s garage
the painted outline
of a missing tool
Bret Mars
a red mark
on her test paper . . .
Indian summer
Michael Dylan Welch
blue
as her corsage
wallflower
Haiku Elvis—Carlos Colon
riverbed…
the sound of moonbeams,
playing rocks
Ted van Zutphen
my ‘yikes!’ haiku (from a suite of the first-ever haiku I submitted to THN)
1.
moon rise
on church window,
mom and I holding hands
2.
magnolia petals
in the wind—
the rush at my wedding
3.
shredded blooms
on my hair—
writing on my journal
4.
spring rain—
the taste of salt spray
the first time
5.
first spring walk—
a clump of drooping snowdrops
black patch smaller
6.
against the haze
a hedge of briar roses—
my unfinished poem
These and the rest in the suite of ten haiku, of course, came back declined. You might want to let me know why, first, and then, I’ll write a self-critique.