[Click] photo by Helen Baker

Winona Baker was the international haiku winner in 1989; she has received Romanian, Croatian and Japanese Awards; written 5 books of poetry; appeared in over 70 anthologies in Europe, Japan, North America and New Zealand and had poems on transit posters. Her poems have been translated into 6 languages. Her latest book is Even a Stone Breathes— Haiku and Senryu.

Goose Summer is a term first used in a NY publication in 1774; also known as Indian summer, the period before a severe frost or, in the case of coastal BC, our winter heavy rains.
Monday's Poem

© Winona Baker


Goose Summer Dawn

Everything's golden: low clouds
teasled above the horizon,
sky, ocean, street, pears and
the droughty lawn still damp
from last night's rain

I never thought April cruel,
September seems more so,
withdrawing light from flowers
whispering de la Mare's words
Look thy last on all things lovely

Age's inexorable trap
seventy plus Septembers
celled in my bones

Caught in this frangible body
faculties shearing off
will I come to believe Hagiwara
Who grown old could look
in a true mirror without horror?

Should age be a foreboding thing?
What beauties can this season bring
consolations for no longer being forty

Honour this older woman
you are here now;
eat an orange and read the paper
There's even a bird singing
in the amber dawn