This was an extremely very difficult contest to judge. Extremely very. You are a talented bunch of haiku writers! Conflicted in my decision, I walked away from the haikus for a week, then thought back to the ones I could remember best. There were two in particular that had surprised me and I thought both of them memorable, but for different reasons. I went back into the pile to find them. Imagine my surprise when I saw that both had been written by the same person! The first of those two is at the top of this page. Rhyming is very nontraditional in a haiku, but the Seussian, tongue-in-cheek, multiple-interpretation ending, “Good-bye” makes it work this time.

Click the painting above to see the second,
even more memorable haiku of Allan G. Lie, the winner Haiku 2013.

I posted about half you haiku entries – randomly chosen – in a video below.
(I apologize if your haiku isn’t in the video. I simply ran out of time.)
– Indiana Beagle