Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “National Haiku Day” by Alexander Hollenberg.

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National Haiku Day

By Alexander Hollenberg

was three days ago—

which means I’ve missed haiku day

forty years running

or however long it’s been around.

If I’m being honest

I’ve never been one for brevity

and now the only image I can muster

is me and Billy Collins

fly fishing on the Susquehanna—

I know he’s never been there

and there’s a word you’d likely never see

in a haiku and

let me tell you something else

I’m realizing right now

is I love the word and

more than any other word

because it can put two guys together

so smoothly and

then it’s the start of something:

Billy and I are fishing

and now there’s a speckled trout

on his line and his line

is taut and sprinkling

the surface with beads

and all I can do is watch

and listen to the vibrating line

and wonder if Billy will catch the trout

by the end of this poem

and what he would do with it if he did—

it’s all so much.

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Copyright © Alexander Hollenberg

Previously published in Human Story will not Consume the Cosmos (Gaspereau Press, 2025).

Alexander Hollenberg is the author of Human Story will not Consume the Cosmos (Gaspereau 2025). His poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Best Canadian Poetry 2025, Contemporary Verse 2, The Dalhousie Review, and Grain. He is a past winner of CV2’s Two-Day Poem Contest, and his work has been nominated for several awards, including the Pushcart, the CBC Poetry Prize, and most recently, The Fiddlehead’s Ralph Gustafson Prize.

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