Timothy Russell - Honorable Mention

In Dubio

Smoke plumes coil in the valley
like cavalry dust, and irises
so purple they must ache bloom
in front of the white block wall,
but rescue is still improbable here
where the moon is as likely
to pass behind heated vapors
rising from a boiler house stack,
as if it were a lemon slice
sinking in some summer drink,
as it is to catch a locust branch,
delicate and vaguely Oriental,
lying across it like scrimshaw,
the same hour, the same night,
where cardinals nest in the wisteria,
Baltimore orioles in the sycamore,
and sparrows in the air conditioner,
where fresh asparagus is exotic
and men tend machinery all night
as if it were troubled livestock.

Timothy Russell is a prematurely retired steelworker whose most recent chapbooks are In Lacrimae and What We Don't Know Hurts. He won the 4th Shiki Internet Haiku Contest, for which he was awarded a trip to Japan, from which he just recently returned.