The Heron’s Nest
The judge for the 2026 Peggy Willis Lyles Haiku Awards was Joyce Clement.
First Place
edge of the continent
a flock of godwits
poking holes
Annette Makino
Arcata, California
There is great playfulness and balance of scale in this haiku. The poem simultaneously contracts and expands. Spatially, the poem zooms in from the edge of a continent to a flock of birds and finally to the tiny holes they leave in the sand. At the same time, it broadens in terms of multitude from a single continent to many birds to the countless holes created by their collective foraging.
The choice of godwits, combined with the poem’s extreme scale and informal language, creates a tone that is both lightheartedly reverent and irreverent. The name “godwit”, with its small letter g, is itself is a good example of this. Godwits are noted as birds that travel the greatest distances in their migrations – spanning continents. Flocks of godwits are sometimes referred to as an omniscience or prayer. Godwits are also a bit silly looking with their exceedingly long needle-thin bills. The Creator’s humor, perhaps? Each line of the haiku contains a couple of letter o’s, adding further to the poem’s “hole-iness.” The final line of poking holes is a funny and surprising ending which can also serve as play on “poking holes in” an (fill in the blank) ism or theory.
On first read, this haiku was immediately satisfying to me. It opened further becoming even more fun and impressively layered upon re-reading, researching, & analyzing.