Special Feature: Haiku and Tanka Selected for International Women's Day against War and for Peace

My Dear Readers:

With war raging in Europe after 77 years of peace, this International Women’s Day is a time to acknowledge the courage, intellect and grit of extraordinary women in key roles in every aspect of this conflict. In commemoration of International Women’s Day 2022, I would like to encourage each of you to take time to rethink the geo/sociopolitics of war and peace through the haiku and tanka selected below:

Selected Haiku and Tanka:

drum roll

rifles at the ready 

at the march out

she can't distinguish 

her son from the others

Ribbons,  13:1, Winter 2017

Hazel Hall

fireflies --

a Kamikaze mother whispers

her son's name

Chrysanthemum Love, 2003

Fay Aoyagi

a soldier

in a foreign land

my son

is too far away to hold

yesterday ... I bathed him

NeverEnding Story, July 12, 2018

Giddy Nielsen-Sweep

crows spiral

in a double helix --

battlefield smoke

Windfall, 4, 2016

Marilyn Humbert

one child

sits alone weeping

for a mother

the falling bombs

will kill twice

NeverEnding Story,  May 17, 2019

Giddy Nielsen-Sweep 

sun dogs

on the winter horizon ...

another body count

First Prize, 2007 Porad Award Winners

Francine Banwarth

more peace talks …

a monal hen startled

by our approach

Shamrock, 32,  2015

Sonam Chhoki

ceasefire --

a soldier comes home

wrapped in moonlight

Honorable Mention, 2015 Mainichi Haiku Contest

Arvinder Kaur

a soldier's headstone  

from one date to another

so short a line

First Prize, 2008 Ukiah Festival

Sylvia Forges-Ryan

in attic webs

I find letters

from father

lost to the dark side

after his tour of duty

Eucalypt, 20, 2016

Marilyn Humbert

training corps

marking time with style

blue mink stockings

bomber jacket, skirt

we made love not war

The Bamboo Hut, Autumn 2016

Martha Magenta

To conclude today's International Women's Day Special Feature post, I would like to share with you the following poems and remarks:

written for Ukrainian girls

bomb shelter wall

the girl draws a dove flying

to a field of sunflowers

Lviv Art Center

turned into a refugee shelter

the sunflowers

in a pink-haired girl's painting

change into soaring white doves

Added: written one day after International Women's Day against War and for Peace

the silhouette

of a soaring white dove

girl at the border

Poetry acts as a witness in, to, and most importantly, through troubled times.

-- Chen-ou Liu, An Interview with Dimitar Anakiev

This is our response to war: to make haiku/tanka more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before. Changing the world one haiku/tanka at a time.

-- Chen-ou Liu paraphrasing Leonard Bernstein

Happy International Women's Day for Peace

Chen-ou