dropping
its last leaf
wind enters the bathhouse

autumn starlight
a long and empty train
sets out

meteor shower
I pull a loose thread
from my coat

sewing needle’s sheen
the cricket cleans
its antenna

dawn chorus
the night watchman
opens one eye

Credit Notes:

[Individual poems were published previously as listed below.]

1. “dropping” was named Prize Winner of the 2020 Haiku International Association Haiku Competition.

2. “autumn starlight” first appeared in Wales Haiku Journal (Autumn 2020).

3. “meteor shower” first appeared in Modern Haiku 46:2.

4. “sewing needle’s sheen” won Highly Commended in the 2017 Sharpening the Green Pencil Haiku Contest.

5. “dawn chorus” first appeared in Wales Haiku Journal (Spring 2020).

Jonathan Humphrey’s

work has recently appeared in Acorn, Contemporary Haibun, Frogpond, The Heron’s Nest, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and Modern Haiku. He is the author of a collection of haiku and haibun, How to Disassemble Your Father’s Ghost (Kattywompus Press, 2017), and his haibun story of the same name is anthologized in The Best Small Fictions 2015. With a fondness for whiskey and whippoorwills, he divides his time between the lights of Nashville and the woods of his native Kentucky.