eggs on the counter -
already
sunny side up
C. Oulens
India
after the flood
sun
the iridescent ravens
timpani beat—
soft rain sways
the daffodils
Tré
Blue Ridge, VA, USA
muddy puddles...
i step into
the sky
Melissa Dennison
United Kingdom
swallowtails
puddling
blue skies
Nancy Orr
Lewiston, Maine
how little it takes to be happy daffodils
Mona Bedi
Delhi, India
today making
no grand ripples —
mud puddle
David Cox
Torquay, UK
late bloomer
a widow discovers
her green thumb
Alvin B. Cruz Philippines
yellow forsythia
Grandma lightly touches
the hospice window
Urszula Marciniak
Poland
chill afternoon
chocolate
at her mouth’s corner
Jacek Margolak
Poland
Michele’s Musings
Hello friends!
Can’t believe Haiku Month is over already! I hope you all enjoyed the daily writing challenge and that you will use this momentum to propel your writing practice forward through the rest of the year.
We are excited to announce the dates for this year’s Solitary Daisy Haiku Contest! Submissions will open on March 21st and run until April 4th. The contest is open worldwide and there will be cash prizes for the top three winners! There will be no theme and you may submit up to two haiku. We hope you will consider entering! Full details will be available on our website soon.
Keep writing!
Member News
Emil Karla (France) shared
this haiku, which appeared in Modern Haiku 57-1:
she only remembered
long after lunch---
rainy birthday
Now that the month of February has come to a close, and with it, NaHaiWriMo, Michele and I would like to extend an invitation to you. From your February prompt-driven haiku, please send us your 15 best. We will choose some submissions, narrow the haiku to 10, and publish them in an upcoming issue of the Daisy. Looking forward to reading your collections!
Sally’s Notebook
It Happened One Tuesday
It happened one Tuesday. Last Tuesday. It started like any normal day. I made coffee, took all my vital statistics (oh, the joy of getting older), and made my lists.
I guess you could say I have OCD tendencies. There are things I do everyday, and if I don’t, or even if I do them in the wrong order, my whole day is thrown off. Every day, I make two lists of at least three things, creative and mundane. I’m one of those list-checker types who will add something to my list after it’s done, just so I can check it off.
But this Tuesday, there was a problem. I didn’t want to do anything on my lists, at all. If this were Sunday, that wouldn’t be a problem. No Pressure Sundays are a thing I made up to keep myself from falling back into the cycle of apathy I was plagued with for most of last year. On No Pressure Sunday, it’s acceptable to make a list and completely ignore it. But this was Tuesday!
I can’t just ignore my list on Tuesday, not without a lot of guilt and self-flagellation, theoretically, of course. So I did what any perfectly normal, entirely sane person would do. I erased the list. Half a bottle of white-out later, I could breathe. Crisis averted.
The question for me was, why did this happen?
I needed to take a minute, slow down, and ask myself what I truly wanted. Once the cobwebs were brushed aside, the answer came quickly. I needed some quiet sitting.
Quiet sitting was something I used to do back in Alberta, mostly while working as a volunteer at a wildlife rehab centre. When the work was done, I’d find a quiet spot to sit, and just listen to what surrounded me. The whoosh of raven wings. Wind in the grass. Songbirds at the feeders.
To feel the sun on my face, the soft nuzzling of a fawn looking for ear scratches, the overwhelming sense of peace. It was a time to let go of everything else, and just be.
I made my way to Munson Pond, a place some of you might remember us talking about before. It’s a wonderful place for a ginko.
It was a warm, beautiful day. The sunlight danced silver on the water and the air was filled with birdsong. I could hear the ducks and geese, of course, and was thrilled to hear the trill of the red-winged blackbird. I wish I had better learned the songs of the other birds, back when I had reliable eyesight. Now that I don’t, I have no way to identify them. I flushed a bevy of quail as I moved to the viewing platform, and then I flushed a bevy more. So many quail!
Across the street from the pond the fields were full of geese, and small clusters moved back and forth between field and pond.
As I breathed in the warm air, I became one with my surroundings, and began to feel whole again.
In the snow leopard scene of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Sean Penn says the following:
“If I like a moment, for me, personally, I don’t like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it.”
As much as I love the quote, I was even more captivated by the idea of NOT taking the photo. Sometimes the best images are found only in your heart.
Yes, quiet sitting at Munson Pond was added to my list, after the fact. And yes, checked off.
Listen to your heart.
Stay in the moment.
Places to submit
Only Human, an English senryu, kyoka, and senbun journal, is now open for submissions for its first issue! Deadline is February 28th.
The 37th ITO EN Oi Ocha Shonhaiku Contest is open for submissions until February 28th. 1000 winning haiku will be published on bottles of Oi Ocha!
Poetry Pea has a fun Video Prompt submission period from February 1st to 28th on their YouTube channel!
Haiku Shack is open for submissions on the theme of water. Final deadline is February 28th, but only 50 pieces are chosen so be sure to submit early.
The World Parkinson Coalition Poetry Project invites the submission of poetry, including haiku, in celebration of the 7th Annual World Parkinson Congress. Deadline is February 28th.
Do you write haiku in French? The Haiku Canada Prix Jocelyne-Villeneuve is open for submissions of French haiku only until February 28th.
Haiku Canada’s Betty Drevniok Award for 2026 opens December 15th and runs until February 28th. Find the submission form here.
Prune Juice is open fortraditional senryu as well as innovative/experimental senryu. The theme for this issue is sex, drugs, and rock and roll! Deadline is February 28th.
Charlotte Digregorio seeks previously published tanka for her blog. You may email her at c-books@hotmail.com with JUST ONE tanka, including the name of the journal, issue number, and year of its original publication. Please submit by March 15.
This Week’s Prompt
Signs of Spring
The deadline for submissions will be Sunday, March 8th.
Send one or two haiku to sally_quon@yahoo.com or to Michele at kelownalady@hotmail.com. Find our full submission info here. Don’t forget to tell us where you are writing from!
“The world is nothing but a moment.”
— Rumi
Michele Rule is a disabled writer from Kelowna BC. She is especially interested in the topics of chronic illness, relationships and nature. Michele is published in the Asahi Shimbun Haikuist, Pine Cone Review, the Enchanted Garden, Five Minute Lit, Shadow Pond, WordCityLit, and the anthologies F*ck the Patriarchy, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and To Live Here, among others. She is an associate member of the League of Canadian Poets and Haiku Canada. Michele has been awarded honourable mention twice for the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational and also for the Haiku Northwest Porad Award. Her first chapbook is Around the World in Fifteen Haiku. Michele lives in a beautiful garden surrounded by people who love her just the way she is.
Sally Quon is a disabled poet and photographer living in the Okanagan Valley of beautiful British Columbia, Canada. She is an associate member of The League of Canadian Poets and a member of Haiku Canada. Her work has been published in numerous journals including The Heron’s Nest, Modern Haiku, Frogpond, First Frost, and Time Haiku. She is currently working on her first book of haiku, haibun, and haiga, tentatively titled, “My Valley, My Home.”
Featherstone Creative
Love this so much. Would love to join y’all for your next issue. 🩷