Haiku Poetry Awards Finalist - A.Abrash Walton

Abigail Abrash Walton serves as a faculty member at Antioch University, based in the Monadnock Region. She describes her winning poem "Stone Pond" as an epic haiku; each three-line stanza of the poem stands alone as a haiku, just as Monadnock means the mountain that stands alone, in the Abenaki language. Taken together, these conventional haikus become one cohesive and rich description of the sensate natural world in and surrounding one of the Monadnock Region's most beautiful water bodies at the height of summer abundance. Stone Pond is a special place with which the poet has been privileged to form a deep and lasting connection.

Stone Pond by A.Abrash Walton

At dusk, on water

Loon calls to the coming night

Owl replies, starlight

Pearl moon full and round

Casts long shadows trees to ground

Insects chorus, loud!

Rain pounds hitting leaves

Dawn arrives as forest breathes

Mist hangs in between

Mushrooms rise, endless

kinds, lift umbrella heads below

Here and there a toad

Chick-a-dee-dee-dee

Peewee’s call slides up and down

Nuthatch trumpet sound

Great blue heron lands

Newts scoot, crayfish hide

Tadpoles wriggle side to side

From flat, sliced globes

White yellow-centered spikes rise

Over green-gold eyes

Salamanders swim

Haphazardly toward brook

Sands shift to deep muck

As dragonflies buzz

Across sun-dappled water

Wind blows, breezes ramble

On filigreed wings

Iridescence announces

Damsel fly’s presence

Pileated drills

Cedar waxwings whistle by

Buzzard soars on high

Clouds wispy, giant, puff

Against blue expansive sky

West to East they fly

Freshwater mussels

Grey-green husks crack open wide

Opal white inside

Fish flit in shallows

At rare moments, a big one

Jumps aloft alone

Waves tumble and lap

Breaking the shore, lying prone

Pine needles and cones

Branches low dipping

Laurels pink blueberries bound

Stones the cove surround

Turtle basks on log

Neck and legs craned to the sun

Painted, wrinkled one

Beaver chew, wet leaves

Mud-tamped dams, sticks, fern fronds

Water fills new ponds

Mown path meanders

Grasses high on either side

On the edge, hawk cries

Flush startled turkey

Jewel weed and goldenrod

Field, seed, plant and pod

On high horizon

Sits Monadnock watching all

Large life towers small