The Shortest Distance
Ebba Story and Michael Dylan Welch, editors. Cover photograph by Garry Gay.
Press Here, Foster City, California, 1993, 20 pages, 51 poets (one poem each), ISBN 1-878798-11-1.
This book was the conference anthology for the second Haiku North America conference, in 1993, which again took place at Las Positas College in Livermore, California (near San Francisco). Here’s a quote from the introduction: “We are normally separated by spatial and temporal distance. As we gather to share and celebrate our involvement with haiku, that distance dissolves. We are drawn together over the shortest distance—shorter even than the written forms we cherish. We meet in the moment where hearts and minds open and rejoice. There is no distance here.” See the Press Here page for this book. The following are a dozen sample poems from the book.
moonrise
outside the hospital
nurses take a drag
Barry Goodmann
Hackensack, New Jersey
half-closed eyes . . .
one lash draws a beam
from the candle
Christopher Herold
Woodside, California
lonely night
the faces painted on the window
of a toy bus
Cor van den Heuvel
New York, New York
Antique map;
an ant travels
the old spice route
Garry Gay
Windsor, California
my face deep
in white lilac
I hear no bees
Geraldine C. Little
Mt. Holly, New Jersey
frost-sharp stars
prick the purple darkness
—pond ice snaps
Hank Dunlap
Prescott, Arizona
a stand of iris
the sudden turn of the koi
raises the bottom
Jerry Ball
Livermore, California
sunset shadows
the curve of the swan’s neck
as she settles
Jean Jorgensen
Edmonton, Alberta
low summer sun—
the shadow of an earring
on your cheek
Michael Dylan Welch
Foster City, California
my son’s toes
dipped in the sea—
his grip tightens
Tom Lynch
Martinez, California
the fence post
hangs upright in the washout—
mid-summer heat
William J. Higginson
Santa Fe, New Mexico
rock garden—
a fallen camellia floats
in the sea of gravel
Yoko Ogino
Kobe, Japan
