Five Poems
by Joshua St. Claire
Spring Haiku
returning starlings
Betelguese winks out
then reignites
spring rain
flooding the meadow
bird’s-eye veronica
Sprague’s pipit
prairie grass in waves
down to the Missouri
robins
pecking
at
the
snow
line
of
red
pines
flush of dogwood
green roots crack
the terracotta sewer
titanium white
one cloud
hides another
mixed clouds
cabbages whites
through wildflowers
Sunday morning
a yellow crocus
breaks ground
Summer Haiku
dandelion garlands
at my back I hear
sparrow’s song
sown fields and fallow mackerel clouds
even at noon
night comes
black-backed gull
summer solstice
surely it will always
be like this
Anna’s hummingbird
how rarely we call each other
our proper names
tinker tailor soldier sailor
mayflies rising
from the Susquehanna
dawn extinguishes
the last star
dandelions
the streetlights
coming on all at once
night-scented stock
fractus clouds
fewer and fewer
white horses
ostinato cicadas
Autumn Haiku
magnificent ramshorn terminating decimal
making the sky
gigantic
a speck of cloud
autumn dusk
a stroke of alizarin crimson
at the horizon
widening gyre
ring-billed gulls
circle the landfill
saffron crocuses
no stars yet in the darkening sky
catch and release
stratus clouds pouring over
the Blue Mountains
evening the red pines in monocolor
this one life
Castor and Pollux
Appalachian lake
I pause on my journey
to the sky
stratocumulus clouds of blackbirds shattering to coalesce
Titian’s vermillion
a cardinalwife dissolves
into sunset
that was a lifetime ago
pelican squadron
Winter Haiku
cigarette smoke
undulating in the frigid air
the Susquehanna
mackerel sky
a chunk of ice
sloughs off the roof
dirty snow
a bare sycamore rising
through mist
first Castor
then Pollux
winter dawn
ice pellets
mix with rain
hammered dulcimer
what lies
beneath my flesh
bare oak
filthy snow piles
dwindling in the mall parking lot
ring-billed gulls
cirrus castellanus
the ragged line
of the Appalachians
somehow greater this way winter maple
Oxford comma
the held breath between
Alberta clippers
Haiku
infinite ellipsis
one wave overcomes
another
Albemarle Sound
a pelican dives
into itself
rising over what used to be a dirt road moon
Heron’s Formula
hemlocks swaying
up to the tree line
vertigo back
the moiré moon
in a mackerel sky
darker now
the red pines
at dawn
cloud vanguard
the Blue Ridge and I
stand our ground
thermals
a black vulture
traces an ensō
the folded schists
of the Appalachians
cirrus intortus
pillbug another rejection
BIO: Joshua St. Claire is an accountant from a small town in Pennsylvania who works as a financial director for a large non-profit. His haiku and related poetry have been published broadly including in The Asahi Shimbun, Modern Haiku, The Heron’s Nest, and Mayfly. His work has appeared in annual anthologies including the Dwarf Stars Anthology (SFPA 2022 and 2023), The Red Moon Anthology (Red Moon Press 2024 (forthcoming)), and contemporary haibun 19 (Red Moon Press 2024 (forthcoming)). He has received recognition in the following international contest for his work in these forms: the Gerald Brady Memorial Senryu Award, the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational, the San Francisco International Award for Senryu, the Touchstone Award for Individual Haiku, the British Haiku Society Award for Haiku, and the Trailblazer Award.