highway markers
how quickly the future
blurs into the past
Author: Annette Makino
Annette Makino is a poet and artist who writes haiku and senryu and illustrates her poems with Japanese ink paintings. Her pieces, comprising a few words and brushstrokes, convey a quiet Zen perspective and gentle sense of humor. There is a gallery of her work at www.makinostudios.com.
cold winter rain
the swollen creek also
rushing home
river current I practice letting go
cowlick
some part of me
still wild
campaign sign
the dog registers
his opinion
windswept dunes
the difference between
wants and needs
hanging in my closet the person I used to be
summer bonfire
the Christmas tree lights up
one last time
(originally appeared in Prune Juice, Issue 11, November 2013)
the time we are given?
sparks rise through darkness
to join the stars
end of yoga
one of the corpses
lightly snoring
(Previously appeared in Yoga-ku, Ed. Terri French, 2014)
home from errands?
a hero’s welcome
from the dog
(Originally appeared in Modern Haiku 44:1, Winter/Spring 2013)
eye exam
in the dark he compliments
my retinas
(The Heron’s Nest, XVI:4, December 2014)
the crunch of frost
bare branches of the oak
alive with stars
water and stone
how we shape
each other
daffodil shoots
parts of us emerge
from hibernation
(Golden Haiku Competition, 2018, Golden Triangle BID, Washington, D.C.)
mouth of the river
an ever-changing story
told to the sea
(haiga)
redwood time . . .
the steady journey
from earth to sky
(haiga)
mountain meadow
ten thousand ways
to open to grace
(haiga)
plain brown bulb
the mystery
of becoming
(haiga)
beach umbrella
all day the orbit
of its shadow
(haiga)
fox tracks …
who was I before
I was tamed?
(haiga)
bright green needles
on the fire-scarred redwood
what we?ve each survived
(haiga)
deep river
the places
that call us home
(haiga)
to love this body
just as it is
twisted shore pines
(haiga)
sun-striped path
the forest’s outbreath
fills our lungs
(haiga)
the shape of a life
one sparkling wave
returns to the sea
(haiga)