Six Haiku
by John Daniel
Photograph by Issue 31 featured artist, Brooke Williams
6 Haiku
The pasture trees are
heavy with apples—the deer
rise on their hind legs.
Me? I write the page,
I’m on the page, I stare back
from the night window.
The three aspens,
yellow leaves aquiver
in a breeze I can’t feel.
Five stray cows rip grass
by the pond this morning.
Upslope, the deer watch.
Squirrel in the crabapple
nibbles a sour fruit, too sweet
to save for the burrow.
Stepping out at night,
failing at words—surprise snow!
A clean, untouched page.
John Daniel’s most recent books are Gifted, a novel, and Of Earth: New and Selected Poems. The haiku published here are from a collection in progress, Dryside Verses: Four Seasons on Goodlow Rim, written during a sojourn in the semiarid steppeland of south-central Oregon. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford, Daniel has authored ten books of essays, memoir, poetry, and fiction. He lives in the Coast Range foothills west of Eugene, Oregon. For more, visit johndaniel-author.net.