sidewalk cracks

the memory
of an old love song
skeleton leaves

the emptiness

within reach
of the hawk’s cry
scattered feathers

going nowhere

hollow nest
no one waits to hear
my footsteps

Note: Italicized lines above are by Christine L. Villa.

Tom Clausen

is a staff member at Cornell University’s A. R. Mann Library and a haiku poet. Retired since 2013, Clausen has continued to curate a daily haiku feature on the library’s website. He is active in the Haiku Society of America and has been a member of the Route 9 Haiku Group since 2003 (see the related Haikupedia article written by Clausen: Upstate Dim Sum). He served on the selection committee for the Haiku Foundation’s Touchstone Distinguished Book Awards in 2016 and 2017.

Several chapbooks of Clausen’s haiku and one of tanka have appeared since 1994. More substantial haiku collections were published by Snapshot Press, Homework (2000) and Growing Late (2007), and by Free Food Press, Laughing to Myself (2015). In addition to being featured in the major haiku journals and contests, Clausen’s work has appeared in more than 20 anthologies.

Born Thomas Paul Clausen in 1951, he lives in Ithaca, New York, in the house where he grew up.

Christine L. Villa

is an all-around creative explorer: an award-winning visual artist who dabbles in painting, doodling, and photography; a crafter; a speaker; a children’s book author; an editor; and a publisher. She is also a poet whose passion for writing haiku and tanka has resulted in the publication of her work in many online and print journals worldwide and has garnered her several awards. Her debut full-length collection of Japanese short-form poetry, The Bluebird’s Cry, was published in 2016.

Chrissi is the founding editor of (1) Frameless Sky, the first haiku and tanka journal that offers collaborations of art, poetry, and music, available on DVD and through private online viewing; and (2) the journal’s imprint, Velvet Dusk Publishing, a small printing press that publishes Japanese short-form poetry, cherita, and mixed-genre full-length books, chapbooks, and ebooks. She was the editor of Ribbons (Tanka Society of America) from Winter 2019 to Winter 2021.

Author’s website: www.christinevilla.com

Author’s blog, Blossom Rain: www.blossomrain.blogspot.com