2020 Haiku

Lynn Cline just interviewed me for KSFR about the free haiku workshop I’ll be teaching on zoom on May 4th (email me for info/registration–msagan1035@aol.com). The show will air on Friday. She asked me to read some haiku written during the pandemic. This simple thoughtful request let me put things together–the haiku create a surprisingly cohesive whole.

Some appeared previously on this blog, in Creatrix, and Bear Creek. The one about pastels is currently on display in the NJ Botanical Garden! Please enjoy.

a pair of geese
make us feel
less lonely

despite everything
wheelbarrow
planted with pansies

forest fire
good news, bad news
smoke

I yell “be nice”
at Echo Amphitheater—
the hikers laugh

“graveyard monuments”
on a weathered sign—next
UFO

marigold tea
in a watering can
16-month old

lonely, but why?
red umbrella
pouring rain

writing on aspen
lost loves
illegible now

wild raspberries
suddenly I see
the bear in you

so many friends gone—
writing haiku in the old
address book

I should have brought
my pastels—
garden before rain

clouds over Baldy
still I wish
to be somewhere else

threw out
my one-line daily journal
forest fire

saying kaddish
on zoom—pandemic
memorial

cooking dinner
for the homeless shelter
I eat a bowlful

a friend I never see yet think of—empty mailbox

walking our
usual loop, our
usual quarrel

bonsai pine
bent by an unseen wind.
as to me…