Whispering Wind
On my early morning walks, I often search for the red-tailed hawk perched in the topmost branch of a cottonwood. From this vantage point, she scans her hunting ground: a pasture dotted with dandelion and wild chicory. The leisurely motion of grazing cattle might flush out voles, mice, rabbits, and grasshoppers, but today the hawk shows no interest in food, seeming to seek something greater than her next meal. Effortlessly gliding on the thermals, she circles higher and higher, attuned to an unspoken rhythm, while the world below fades away. With each ascent, she draws a part of me with her.
mountaintop
a cloud lets go
into open sky
Published by
Dru Philippou
Dru Philippou is a Cypriot–British-American writer and poet with a lifelong career in education. A two-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize in 2006, her work appears in twelve editions of the Red Moon Anthology and other notable publications. Philippou won an honorable mention in the Robert Spiess Memorial Haiku Award 2008, and in 2024 she took first prize in the Peggy Willis Lyles Haiku Awards. Following honourable mentions in three Genjuan International Haibun Contests (2015, 2017, and 2018), among others, her "Afterlife" won first place in the Haiku Society of America’s 2021 Haibun Awards, and "Pilgrimage" received the same recognition in 2023. Her tanka prose memoir, A Place to Land, was published in 2022. Philippou has lived in northern New Mexico, since 1995.
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lovely….it must be fabulous living in such a nature filled place.
Lovely picture with your words. Love watching hawks and you are so true I want to go with them.
Hi Dru,
A beautifully serene haibun.I like the way you are drawn upward with the hawk.
Thank you.
Beautifully written, Dru.
Wow! This was very powerful to me . . .really spoke to me. Thank you so much!
A brilliant word picture!
Such a beautiful, atmospheric haibun.
Stunning, Dru!
Wow! That is so beautiful! The whole haibun flows along like the wind. The haiku section works so perfectly with the prose. Excellent.