The Heron's Nest

The Peggy Willis Lyles Haiku Awards for 2026

The judge for the 2026 Peggy Willis Lyles Haiku Awards was Joyce Clement.

First Place

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.

Second Place

My reading of “receding tide” is that of failing memory brought on by dementia. But whose failing memory? Maybe the mother’s, maybe the adult child’s? Maybe both. The haiku is opened-ended in this regard, leaving room for the reader to choose.

The bathing cap here is important. It situates the memory in an earlier era while functioning symbolically. Head-shaped, the cap could be suggestive of the human mind and its capacity when “all there” to conceptually contain such vastnesses as the ocean. This specific memory may present a subconscious desire of the adult child to offer that which will make his/her mother whole again.

No matter the interpretation, there is a touching innocence to this haiku. My immediate response to it was strongly reminiscent of my response to the Peggy Willis Lyles haiku:

for her mother
bluets
roots and all

That, for me, speaks highly of it and makes it most appropriate to be selected for the Peggy Willis Lyles Haiku Awards.

Third Place

Here is a writer exercising the self-restraint needed to receive informed feedback with a calm, open mind. Unlike criticism, a critique is meant to be constructive and instructive, offering a balanced evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of a creative work. We sip when something is very hot or highly concentrated and may overwhelm if gulped down all at once. “Sipping a critique” has the writer slowing his/herself down so that he/she can carefully take in feedback without being reactive or defensive. This allows him/herself the time and space needed to cool off and as objectively as possible extract the full benefit, the nectar, of a well thought out appraisal. A worthy message.

Along with its unusual images, what tipped the scale for me with this haiku, however, was the word choices and how those choices physically affect the way the poem reads. The first time through I asked myself why am I finding this ku difficult to read? My answer turned out to be, because you cannot “speed read” this poem aloud. The poem contains soothing soft vowels at the beginning, middle, and end. However, scattered throughout are sharp, almost cutting, consonants that harshly interrupt the flow of air: critique, orchid, nectar. Try saying “orchid’s nectar spur” quickly and notice how much your mouth must work to do so. The words themselves insist that you slow down. Sip the words, they are quite wonderful when savored separately.

Honorable Mentions

“Deflating” is such an effective verb. It places the reader inside a balloon of night. Those pinpricks of firefly light don’t burst the night; they instead deflate it. This intensifies the darkness by rapidly bringing it in closer and giving it an almost startling physical presence like a thick skin that will fall on the shoulders, drape to the ground… I found this to be a fresh take on a firefly haiku. For me that is always a welcomed encounter!

In recent years I have read many war news haiku that have a psychologically numbed-out speaker changing the channel, turning a page, or otherwise trying to ignore, avoid, distract. The kaleidoscope makes this war news haiku stand out for me. Here is a speaker who seemingly attempts to disconnect by tunneling into and focusing on the kaleidoscope’s beautiful patterns. But a kaleidoscope makes its patterns through the use of shattered glass. Wars cannot be shut out by this metaphorical kaleidoscope, because its very designs emerge from the resulting "rubble." So is the speaker really trying to disconnect? Or is the speaker exploring all the angles of the news?

I returned to this haiku again and again because I found it to be such a beautiful and quieting example of suchness. This is an engines-off, oars-up moment where the loudest sound is a whale’s breath.

Because the fog shrouds our vision, the poem turns our attention to sound, and the sounds of its words mirror the stillness it depicts. It is filled with h’s asking to be read in a whisper: the, within, hush, whale, exhale. The ah and uh vowel sounds are soft like the fog. The elongated a’s of the last line accentuate the essence of the longevity, depth, and mystery of the whale. The whale itself is unseen, a submerged immensity from below. The vapor of the whale’s exhale adds to immensity of air above — air that in this instant is only made visible because of the fog.

This moment is a great gift for the observer and, through the poet's careful attention, an equally satisfying gift to us as readers.

Oh my, I’m not sure it can be said any better than this haiku does. The closed casket, containing the deceased loved one, does what it can to shield mourners from additional pain by concealing the physical evidence of death and suffering, and limiting reminders of the circumstances surrounding it. We readers can only speculate what those circumstances might be, but a closed casket suggests they were probably violent or otherwise ravaging. Condensing hold and withhold into one word makes this dual purpose especially effective. How appropriate the “with” is enclosed in parentheses, creating a little “word casket” within the haiku itself.

I have not said it any better, so I will stop here.

A brief poem that contemplates the brevity of life. Ephemerals are both the perennial woodland wildflowers whose life cycle is so fleeting and, of course, ourselves, whose existence is equally transient when compared with the mountain that both the flowers and people ascend. Upon reaching the summit, the human climbers will bid farewell to a deceased loved one, perhaps with a scattering of ashes.

This haiku is “Lyles-esque” in the best of ways: gentle, deceptively simple, quietly profound. Its emotional power emerges not through overt sentiment but through the juxtaposition of transience and permanence. The spring ephemerals, the climbers, and the deceased (and ashes) all share the condition of impermanence, while the mountain stands as a silent witness whose endurance places human life in perspective. In only a few words, the poem invites reflection on mortality, remembrance, and the abiding rhythms of the natural world.

Joyce Clement
July 2026