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| Issue 32: | June 2026 |
| Haibun: | 54 words |
By Margaret Walker
Always*
And I’ll love you when I’m most at odds with living I’ll hold you close wherever I am led the lines of year after year an interlude Your touch is something I will cherish all my days to come ... Til my ashes on that sacred ground are spread a passage too long diminuendo
*Lines in italics are from the original song “Ashes Spread on Sacred Ground” on the 2022 album Damascus by North Carolina singer and songwriter Judson Hair. Lyrics appear here with his kind permission. His music and bio details are available at ReverbNation online:
“Ashes Spread on Sacred Ground”: https://www.reverbnation.com/judsonhair/song/32848619-ashes-spread-on-sacred-ground-original
Damascus album: https://www.reverbnation.com/3556011/album/292850
Margaret Walker
is a former school principal and university professor, who is now homebound with ME/CFS. Her writing has been published in Blithe Spirit; Blōō Outlier Journal; Drifting Sands Haibun; Failed Haiku; #FemkuMag; haikuNETRA (October 2023); Human/Kind Journal; Kingfisher Journal; The Pan Haiku Review; Prune Juice; Stardust Haiku; and whiptail: journal of the single-line poem. Her poems have been nominated for the Contemporary Haibun anthology, the Pushcart Prize (haibun), the Red Moon Anthology (haiku and haibun), and the Touchstone Awards (haiku and haibun).
She served as a judge for the inaugural Trailblazer Contest for haikai poetry (2021) and is a confluence Fellow for 2025-26. Though she’s a native of South Carolina transplanted to the US Midwest, a quiet beach in SC has been “home” for most of her life.
More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond
⚡ Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, haibun by Margaret Walker in #FemkuMag (Issue 40, Autumn/Winter 2025), nominated for the anthology Contemporary Haibun 21
⚡ Hide and Seek, haibun in #FemkuMag (Issue 35, Spring 2024), nominated for the 2024 Touchstone Awards
⚡ Shameless Hussy, haibun in #FemkuMag (Issue 37, Autumn/Winter 2024), nominated for the 2024 Touchstone Awards
⚡ Not for Sale in Drifting Sands Haibun (Issue 30, December 2024; page 32)
⚡ Mosaic in Drifting Sands Haibun (Issue 16, July 2022; page 50)
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