winter sun
the weight of a chickadee
in my palm
2025 Haiku Canada Betty Drevniok Awards
This verse brings together traditional aesthetic values, including toriawase, shasei, and karumi. Its governing insight is the shared quality of diminished presence: the faint energy of the winter sun and the nearly weightless touch of the chickadee. This structural parallel gives the pairing coherence.
The ku is built entirely from sense impressions—the sight and slight heft of the bird, the sensation of its moving feet, the cold air, the implied silence and snowy surroundings. This observational fidelity aligns closely with shasei, allowing the poem to register the moment without commentary or symbolic overreach.
Its karumi is expressed through objectivity, tonal restraint, and formal economy. The diction is plain, the pacing unhurried, and the perspective free of personal reflection, all of which keep the moment light rather than dramatic. The poem’s clarity depends on what it withholds as much as what it presents.
Taken together, these choices make the verse a quiet nod to classical practice—not imitative, but intentionally rooted in the older discipline of precise pairing, faithful observation, and an unforced, understated touch.