Haiku Artist Job Application Cover Letter 

About this work:

This poetic cover letter was submitted to work for a group that writes in-the-moment haiku for people at events.  They requested a brief bio and three haiku on topics of winter, birds, and hope.  The letter incorporates all that and more as a series of haiku along with a limerick and tanka.  

Sadly, ‘twas for naught.  

 They wanted someone younger 

And better looking. 

Hello Ms. Howdy;

  My name is Don Watenpaugh.  

    I write everything.  

A blurb about me?

    My wheels turn in many ways,

Like a gyroscope.

   We are on LinkedIn.  

Our stories live in the cloud 

   ‘Til they fall like reign.  

Data create art.  

Numbers, letters, visuals, play.  

What’s your Videnda? 

     H     A     I     K     U

From Japanese to English, 

    TransPacific poems. 

The equator sees

Winter south and summer north

Or vice versa.

This warm Texas day

  In winter must feel like right

    Now in Zimbabwe. 

     Geese, ducks, and turkeys, 

    Regardless of the season, 

     Hope for fowl weather.  

 Hope’s Gift

     What is hope to you?  

Is it what hope does for you?  

        If it gives you hope.  

Old birds in winter

     Hope to spring into summer

            Then shed their fall down.  

   Would calligraphy 

 Or ekphrastic work enhance 

      Poems of Haikuists?  

While we love the haiku we are writing, 

There are other forms also inviting.  

With a rhyme and a trick

The beloved limerick

Could make events still more exciting!  

   Speaking of five lines,

But back to no need for rhymes,

   Consider Haiku

   As the short little sister

Of loving big sis Tanka.

This cover letter

Wrote itself in my cortex.  

     Haiku very much!  

DW