keyhole—
the sun lets itself
in

8-31

**

**

winter chill
a love song my father wrote
not to my mother

8-30

mountain hike
a cairn
a rock higher

Johnette Downing



Recipient of the 2017 Louisiana Writer Award, the 2024 Robert Spiess Memorial Haiku Award, and the 2026 NOTCF Literary Arts & Humanities Award, Johnette Downing is a North American poet and artist specializing in haiku, senryu, haibun, and haiga (haiku and art). Cofounder of the former New Orleans Haiku Society, and the first Art Editor of bottle rockets (2023-2025), Johnette is the author of Singing Waters, A Selection of Haiku, Senryu, and Haibun, which is a collection of over one hundred of her previously published poems in one volume, (April 2022, buddha baby press).

midsummer—
the boat tips
toward the whale

-Johnette Downing

polka dots
farther apart
at the hips

-Johnette Downing

roller coaster
leaving my voice
at the top

-Johnette Downing

tears of a stranger
leave their mark
on me

-Johnette Downing

tide pool –
children
come and go


**

**


slice of moon
he says he likes
to miss me


**

**

coffin
in the curves
of the tuba


**

**

Zen garden
a single
chime


-Johnette Downing

dry riverbed
she moves on
with her life

-Johnette Downing