Feature

Best Traditional Haiku

A couple more Republican presidential administrations, and there won't be any more nature worth haikuing about. So enjoy it while it lasts! Grand Imperial Mistress of Haiku Gail Miller gets a $25 gift certificate to Bookworks, a $20 certificate to the District and two passes to the Guild Cinema for a haiku that I suppose could best be labeled neotraditional. Whatever you call it, it's a beauty.

Winner
The rain falls in code—
Wet spidery penmanship
That demands cracking.
—Gail Miller

Honorable Mentions
An empty can glides
Across shattered asphalt lots
Eight pigeons take flight
—Susan Cummings

Over bleached salt flats
Ten blackbirds flapping north change
To a tar-smoke cloud
—Carol Moscrip

Strands of green kelp, locked
In late tide's rock pool, bracelet
Arms of a red star
—Carol Moscrip

A leaf falls, twig snaps
I think about winter air
Frogs freezing in mud
—Shelby Anderson

Oranges tossed upon
A river after New Year:
Souls or good fortune?
—Leslie McMurtry

Late frost fingers pinch
Buds, plump like ladies' bottoms,
Blue where pink belongs.
—Janet S. Harris