Category: Issue 17.1

We begin our new issue 17.1 with a double dose of nature’s visual fireworks. First, there are the myriad of colorful fish darting around this lively coral reef

into the spring mist the mallard pair and the mallards to come

scent of cedar a yellow-bellied slider from sun to shade

spring like nobody’s watching

daffodils running wild among the stones of an old homestead voices echo

the farmhouse where he was born ripening wheat  

birthday card— onion skins skitter away

  the slow time between freeze and thaw what am I waiting for?  

returning geese… do they, too, remember a childhood home

  first shoots the rescue party making it through    

spring blossoms our newborn before language  

Learning English passing clouds the changing colours of bougainvillea Opening grandmother’s handmade notebook at C, I find a carob pod and recall her story

beneath the waves the pearled words of oysters  

unfolding a map the ocean between us

doomsday clock the scent of rain before the rain  

everything in its own time starlight  

thunderbolt a glimpse of the puppeteer?s fingertips

the world reveals its tender heart the singing wren

children’s voices – the daisies in the vase unwilt  

ballet recital the parents tiptoe in    

hum in the honeysuckle first day of school

first graders model clay pinch pots Earth Day

backlit by the morning star blackbird song    

flute notes through the summer air sparrows

willow catkins in the evening wind notes of Chopin       (First appeared as an Honorable Mention in The 16th Mainichi Haiku Contest, 2013)

birdsong a boy gently holds a string of firecrackers  

first light a strand of her hair between my lips  

home alone the teapot whistles a single note

late again a dozen roses all alike       (Originally published in Modern Haiku, 40.3)

wildflowers never make promises

the setting sun floods potato fields with crimson a migrant looks up at geese flying south  

unpacked box on the kitchen table? foreign headlines    

tears when we have to leave your height chart on the door jamb  

waiting for a call from the son who never calls ? Mother’s Day

The Look   Two or three times a year I make trips to Chennai to be with my parents for a few weeks. My mother is 85 years old.?I notice every shade of emotion that runs

a good chance she’ll change her mind ? sunshowers  

the now she returns to dementia

steam rising through a band of light winter tea

breaking into an abandoned house January wind

in foreclosure the dream house we didn’t buy

business lunch the dialogues unspoken  

after the protest moonlight on empty tear-gas canisters  

sickle day moon boys from the county lockup cut highway grass  

pit stop we water the roadside flowers  

remembrance day the gate clangs against its lock    

a broken tooth yet he sees the young girl naked before him smiling a wide smile as she was at twenty       (Included in A Gift of Tanka, AHA Books, 1990)

on the mend . . . this long afternoon stitched by swallows  

traffic hum honey bees nesting in an old pine

Amidst Tricksters   On geyser time, we rise throughout the night with Old Faithful?chilled to the marrow, despite layers and down bags and molten rock a mere

checking email? the hole in me where the funnies used to be  

rainy day my loneliness stays inside

Groundhog Day? shaving the shadow from my face  

the felled oak bending to fit the earth         (Included in Tiger in a Teacup, AHA Books, 1998)

winter ridgeline a long drawn-out conversation with wind

filaments of snow drifting sideways on the wind-- old pines shed their ghosts

snow on snow all the things we keep hidden    

a horse gallops in flickering firelight Lascaux cave

migrating geese a girl in a sandbox plays with trucks

crowded trolley the conductor composes himself

green fields flooded the train passing a station without stopping  

strumming the ukulele always summer  

wedding dance a bachelor moves in on the gin

end of yoga one of the corpses lightly snoring       (Previously appeared in Yoga-ku, Ed. Terri French, 2014)  

on the wrong side of history graveyard tulips  

deep fern-gully the magpie?s warble curls through mist  

gray morning the sound of a red canoe  

kingfisher splitting the river  

border attack . . . lupine seed heads pop in the heat

home from errands? a hero’s welcome from the dog         (Originally appeared in Modern Haiku 44:1, Winter/Spring 2013)

sheltering against the dawn . . . thistledown  

inch by inch the inchworm goes by the book

charity dinner selfies first  

lightning the vibration of katydids

frantic ants still building the unlit fire    

poems without verbs the heat         (Originally appeared in Modern Haiku 46.2)

late-summer quiet cattails starting to shred

last one in a moth enters through the closing door