Pink Azaleas, by Mike Dillon

Pink Azaleas, by William Merritt Chase (USA). 1890.

Pink Azaleas 
 
Pink azaleas in a blue Chinese vase
   their colors quickened
   by a world of shadows.
 
Not one petal has fallen.
   Not one petal, yet — 
   the shadows remind us.
 
Mike Dillon
 
Mike Dillon lives in Indianola, Washington, a small town on Puget Sound northwest of Seattle. He is the author of four books of poetry and three books of haiku. Several of his haiku were included in Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years, from W.W. Norton (2013). Departures, a book of poetry and prose about the forced removal of Bainbridge Island’s Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor will be published by Unsolicited Press in April 2019.