The Heron’s Nest

Editors’ Choices

The Heron’s Nest Award

The wonderful gift of haiku—often described as one-breath poetry—is its ability to hold us for a brief moment in time by directing our attention to the now, and to the quiet wonders right in front of our eyes. For this issue, the Editor’s Choice haiku by Kristen Lindquist is an elegant exploration of time and place, offering many layers of meaning within her well-crafted words. Time, we are told, is relative, fleeting, elusive, and waits for no one. Many familiar quotations come to mind, such as John Archibald Wheeler’s observation that “Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.” I recently read a Zen-inspired teaching suggesting that, to live a productive and generous life, rather than perceiving existence solely through our own limited field of perception, we try to see life from another sentient being’s perspective and to empathize more fully. This shift takes us out of ourselves and into a wider, more compassionate way of living. With this haiku, we can see a compound modifier being used to suggest fog as a sustained condition over the course of the day. Fog can make us feel suspended in the now, yet within an unknown passage of time. In line two, we encounter a buoy which, by definition, is an anchored float serving as a navigational marker that warns of hidden hazards. But it can also serve as an anchorage, holding us in one place and offering safety. You can sense the depth of associations that emerge from reading into this haiku and how it suggests, as great haiku often do, something that will resonate differently for each reader. Sometimes we need markers that show the way forward, and at other times we need a safe anchorage where we can pause, reflect, and take stock of things. Here, the marker indicates our place within a passage of time, or perhaps a life in transition, and the author draws us all into this shared moment. As we age, time often appears to speed up, reminding us of its relativity to what is happening in our lives.

This poem (as some of the best haiku often do) slows things down, allowing us to pause—one breath at a time.

Ron C. Moss
March 2026