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

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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.