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spring breeze--
the pull of her hand
as we near the pet store

—Michael Dylan Welch
        

Woodnotes #19, Winter 1993, p. 20.
The Haiku Anthology. Cor van den Heuvel, ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999, p. 270.
Mie Times (Japan) #30, June-July 1998, p. 3.
IDG World Update 28:25, June 22, 1998, p. 5.
Global Haiku: Twenty-five Poets Worldwide. George Swede and Randy Brooks, eds. Cullercoats, North Shields, U.K.: Iron Press; Oakville, Ontario: Mosaic Press, 2000, p. 103.
Illinois News Feb. 24-Mar. 1, 2000, p. 25.
Haiku: A Poet’s Guide. Lee Gurga. Lincoln, Illinois: Modern Haiku Press, 2003, p. 110.

This was written in Palo Alto, California, in the autumn, and was actually inspired by a coffee shop. But it was the pull of my girlfriend's hand that mattered most, and I felt that the youthful exuberance that tug represented would go better with spring and a pet store. Though this poem doesn't say the age of the female in the poem, nearly everyone I ask (at haiku workshops) says that they picture a little girl.

About the author: Michael Dylan Welch is editor/publisher of Tundra: The Journal of the Short Poem. A long-time vice president of the Haiku Society of America, he was also cofounder of the Haiku North America conference in 1991, cofounder of the American Haiku Archives in 1996, and founder of the Tanka Society of America in 2000. He has published his poetry in hundreds of journals and anthologies in more than a dozen languages, and has won first prize in each of the Henderson, Brady, Drevniok, and Tokutomi contests, among others. Though originally British, and having grown up in England, Ghana, Australia, and Canada, Michael now lives with his wife and two children near Seattle, Washington.