Peggy Willis Lyles Award

Photo:  jeffreyw/Creative Commons/Flickr

childhood summers
the weight of a
goldfinch

I got an honorable mention!  This is totally unexpected and such an honor.  I love Peggy Willis Lyles' haiku.  Here is the line-up of winners and judge's comments.

Peggy once wrote, "Sometimes we say too much. Words get in the way. . . . A good haiku offers just enough words, just the right words, to recreate the essence of a specific time and place and hold it permanently available."    

Here is more information about Peggy.  Read some of her haiku and you'll see why I love her and why this feels like such an honor.  

This haiku came to me one day when I was sitting on our front porch admiring the sunflowers in our garden.  A goldfinch lit on one of the flowers and the flower barely nodded under the weight of the little bird.  

I started thinking about the freedom of summertime that we have as children when the days are so long and so endless and how valuable that is in this day and age.  I can proudly say that we were able to preserve this for our boys, giving them plenty of time to roam the woods, build forts, lie in the grass with their dogs, swim in the pond, and gaze at the stars.  Who knows what goes on in the mind of a child on days like this.  Nothing and everything.  Time to muse.  Much more precious than gold.