Selected Haiga and Photo-Haiga

The following haiga and photo-haiga present poems by Michael Dylan Welch, with artwork or photography from various sources. The first piece is a previously unpublished poem written in response to a postcard image given to me by John Budan, shared on Facebook on 2 April 2019. The second poem, a photo-haiga, is a still video image from “Haiku Getaway,” produced by Haiku Chronicles, released 6 April 2019, with the poem previously published in the 2014 Seabeck Haiku Getaway anthology, Rainsong. The third image is something I put together for fun, and the fourth is a bit more serious, together with images of the same poem from its outdoor installation in Washington, DC in the spring of 2022. The next two haiga appeared in Contemporary Haibun Online 18:3, December 2022, with images from a library of Japanese paper designs (the second of these two images was also the opening image in that issue of Contemporary Haibun Online—see the table of contents). The last two photo-haiga appeared in Contemporary Haibun Online 19:1, March 2023, with photo images sourced from Unsplash. See also “Dense Fog,” “Tarnished Silver, and Haiga with Other Artists.”

April Fools’ Day—

my death poem

still unwritten


Inspired by a postcard given to me by John Budan with the challenge to write a poem in response.

night walk—

we all return

wet from the woods

snow day

snow falling

on snowy snow

cedars and firs

as still as stones . . .

mountain rain

(selected for the Golden Triangle haiku installation, Washington, DC, March/April 2022).       +

paulownia

leaf

in

the

alcove

granny’s

guitar

in the sky

between lily pads

a frog’s dream

call of a cardinal winter stillness

village church carols from the doorway