Earth Hour Haiku

Earth Hour Party:
my niece begins to lose
count of the stars

The Globe and Mail (March 31st, 2012);
The Toronto Star & the World Kigo Database

Winter Haiku

winter sun
in the eyes of a street dog
migrant worker

The Toronto Star (Feb. 12, 2012)

Summer Haiku

I hear a fly buzz
when reading Two Solitudes...
summer twilight

The Toronto Star (September 1, 2011)

Note:

The term, "two solitudes," refer to a lack of will for communication between Anglophone and Francophone people in Canada. It was popularized by Hugh MacLennan's 1945 novel of the same name, and it was mentioned once throughout the novel:

Two solitudes in the infinite waste of loneliness under the sun

A Haiku

For Stephen Lewis

is she on her way?
We Are the World
sung loud on the radio  

The Toronto Star (August 30, 2011)

Note:

Former U.N. Ambassador Stephen Lewis ended his moving eulogy for Jack Layton yesterday with this inspiring quote:

Not only is another world possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

~Arundhati Roy

Urban Tanka

the CN Tower
illuminated in orange
under its shadow
two homeless men
lean against each other

The Toronto Star (August 28, 2011)

Note:

The CN Tower glowed the iconic NDP orange to honor the party’s former federal leader Jack Layton from sunset Saturday to sunrise Sunday. Layton’s first book is entitled Homelessness: The Making and Unmaking of a Crisis.

Summer Haiku

(for Jack Layton and Olivia Chow)

she walks alone
behind the flag-draped coffin
a summer cloud

The Toronto Star (August 24, 2011)

Time, Changer of Seasons: A Tanka Sequence

don't touch me
your hand looks dirty...
I feel
something inside me fraying
something I drape spring dreams in

the inner voice cries
jump as high as you can...
summer heat
makes my feet stick
in white asphalt

accidentally
stepping on my neighbor's shadow...
he yells
at me, illegal alien
I see southbound geese fly overhead

first snow
a black boy gazes up at the sky
until his face
is covered with snow...
time to dye my hair blond?

unemployed
due to no Canadian experience
my little brother
stands at full attention --
writing poems needs nothing but time

Lynx, XXVI:1

Note: The concluding poem was reprinted in The Toronto Star (Sep. 10, 2011)

Urban Haiku

a 5k
traffic jam on 401
a V of geese honks

World Kigo Database (Urban Haiku and Senryu)
The Toronto Star (Aug. 24, 2011)