Mann Library Daily Haiku - Selections

“to accept the things” is 8x10, made with washi paper, acrylic paint and glue on cradled wood. © Annette Makino 2020

Annette Makino was the featured poet for March 2025 on Mann Library’s Daily Haiku site at Cornell University, edited by Tom Clausen.

alone at the beach
someone else’s dog
brings me a stick

breeze through the oaks
some things still right
with the world

to lead a life
of such purpose . . .
ants in a line

for better or for worse
our lights and darks
tumbling together

home from errands—
a hero’s welcome
from the dog

our easy silence
every puddle
sky-deep

semester abroad
she waves from the far side
of security

fog-shrouded coast
we listen
to the view

beach umbrella
all day the orbit
of its shadow

art studio
a full day’s work
under my nails

news barrage
I lose my husband
to the war

waiting for whales
we settle for
the ocean

meditation
          a housefly bumps and bumps
against the window

“hunger moon” is 11x14, made with paper, acrylic paint, crayon and glue on cradled wood. © Annette Makino 2022

hunger moon
a descendent of wolves
licks our plates

lights out—
we discuss
our extinction

redwood duff
yesterday’s rain
still falling

wild geese
kvetching across the sky
March bluster

maybe I too
have softened with age
moss-covered stones

empty nest
our son’s old sweater
on the dog

“parallel worlds” is 8x10, made with paper, acrylic paint, ink, metallic thread and glue on cradled wood. © Annette Makino 2022

parallel
worlds
the
stack
by
my
bed

hand-hewn boards
beams of sunlight
fill the barn

long before language the S of the river

driving lesson
he practices
leaving home

plain brown bulb
the mystery
of becoming

edge of the woods
some things I may not
want to know

gentle rain
I remind my mother
to buckle up

cowlick
some part of me
still wild

"October sun” is 5x7, sumi ink and Japanese watercolors on paper. © Annette Makino 2020

what remains
of the mountain
sand between my toes

October sun
the sky the color
of forever

redwood time
the steady journey
from earth to sky

•

These haiku previously appeared in the following journals and anthologies:

A New Resonance 13: Emerging Voices in English-Language Haiku, Red Moon Press, 2023
Acorn
Big Data: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language 2014, Red Moon Press
Calendar of Art and Haiku, Annette Makino, Makino Studios (multiple years)
Contemporary Haibun (print journal)
Contemporary Haibun Online
Dust Devils: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2016, Red Moon Press
Every Day Poetry, TS Poetry Press, Nov. 18, 2014
Fear of Dancing: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2013, Red Moon Press
Four Hundred and Two Snails: Haiku Society of America Members' Anthology 2018
Frogpond
Gratitude in the Time of COVID-19: The Haiku Hecameron, Girasole Press, 2020
Haigaonline
Kingfisher
Mariposa
Modern Haiku
The Helping Hand Haiku Anthology, Middle Island Press, 2020
The Heron’s Nest
The Signature Haiku Anthology: Including Senryu and Tanka, Middle Island Press, 2020
The Wonder Code: Discover the Way of Haiku and See the World with New Eyes, Scott Mason, Girasole Press, 2017
This World: Haiku Society of America Members' Anthology 2013
tinywords
Water and Stone: Ten Years of Art and Haiku, Annette Makino, Makino Studios, 2021
Wishbone Moon: An Anthology of Haiku by Women, Jacar Press, 2018
With Cherries on Top, Press Here (2012)

Some of these poems were honored in the following contests:

Harold G. Henderson Haiku Contest, Haiku Society of America
Museum of Haiku Literature Award, Haiku Society of America Executive Committee
Porad Haiku Award, Haiku Northwest
Touchstone Individual Poem Award, The Haiku Foundation

Migration

This haibun (prose with haiku) appears in Rattle, Issue 87, Spring 2025, an edition featuring the haibun form.

Everyone just calls it “the gully.” It’s a bit of wilderness in the midst of our Southern California development. A creek runs through it, lined with eucalyptus trees.

A winter’s day. I am around nine. Some friends and I come upon a strange sight: large clumps of dry leaves hanging from the trees. These turn out to be monarch butterflies—in fabulous numbers. Some fly around the gully and near our faces, bright flashes of orange like enchanted confetti. I hold out my hands and for an instant, one almost lands there.

dappled light
the untamed taste
of sourgrass

Soon after, my parents divorce. My mother, sisters and I keep moving farther and farther away. Then to my mother’s native Switzerland for a year. The day after we fly back to California, my father stops by on his way to the airport. He is returning to his homeland of Japan—for the rest of his life.

rope swing
assessing the depth
of my losses

More than once over the following decades, he moves without telling us his new address. We see each other just three more times.

return to sender
the chrysalis
unopened

As for the monarchs, severe drought and disease take their toll. For a few years, the butterflies all but disappear from the gully. But now they are returning: last December, more than 26,000 were counted on a single day. In just four hours of flying, I could go back fifty years in time and see them again.

arriving starlight
his radiant smile
in my dream

•

Contributor note: Sometimes it feels absurd to try to convey the complexity and nuance of any human experience with just 26 letters—like using a mud-covered stick to paint the Sistine Chapel. I find that combining art forms is one good way to expand the possibilities for expression. As an artist, I enjoy working in the Japanese tradition of haiga: art combined with haiku so that both elements deepen our understanding of the whole. A similar process happens in a successful haibun: together, the prose and haiku expand the overall meaning in an intuitive way that neither could do alone. And suddenly, those meager 26 letters transport us to a new world.

— Annette Makino, published in Rattle, No. 87, Spring 2025

Shorter Days

This haiku sequence first appeared in Frogpond, the journal of the Haiku Society America, and was then selected for Telling the Bees, the Red Moon anthology of the finest English-language haiku published around the world in 2024.

more patch than road
Mom finally lets me
zip up her coat

untied shoelaces at her wit’s end

she requests
the thing with wheels
departing geese

her hearing aid lost afternoon

tangled DNA
all the diapers
she changed for me

Mom asks whether
she’s had dinner
lavender sunset

steeping tea
my shouted
small talk

how she lights up
when I make her laugh
wildflower honey

rice paper lamp
the water glass shaking
in her hand

she says she’s still
the same person inside
stars between clouds

holding her hand the length of a lifeline

night light glow
I sing her the lullaby
she once taught me

— Annette Makino, published in Frogpond, 47:3, Autumn 2024; and Telling the Bees: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2024, edited by Jim Kacian and the Red Moon Editorial Staff, Red Moon Press, 2025

At the Exit

solstice morning
our old dog
unable to rise

purple beach pea
his warm weight
in my arms

the last thing
we can do for him . . .
the vet’s gentle voice

summer twilight
a final treat
from my palm

at the exit
donating
his leash

hot tears all day the empty dog bed

RIP Misha, 2006 or 2007 - 2023. See also In Memory of Misha.

a lock of his fur
every verb tense
wrong

his collar
still hanging by the door
a single white cloud

a small clay dog
joins the ancestor shrine
forest hush

the beach without him
ocean merging
into sky

wagging tail
he comes running back
in my dreams

— Annette Makino, published in Modern Haiku, 55:3, Autumn 2024