“Dirt”
brown and granular
like a mountain on the road
randomly displaced
“Topsoil”
dirt boxed in plastic
winterizing in garage
waiting to garden
“Compost pile”
Intentional trash,
secretly alive in spring,
slowly soils itself.
“Landfill”
An expanding pile,
stinking in the summertime,
mixes in with the earth.
“Soil profile”
A concrete slab caps
layers of earth in autumn.
Red leaves pile on top.
These haiku are copyright 2025 by Jessica McLean. File sharing is encouraged
Author’s note: In Fall 2025, I followed up with someone on if they submitted a poem to a poetry competition. They said they did, and that the only way they thought they could lose was if they wrote a haiku on dirt. “Oh really,” I thought. “Challenge accepted.” And so, I decided to write my own mini collection of haiku on dirt. There are five haiku here: one intro haiku and one haiku for each season. Haiku generally lend themselves to topics about nature, so it was easy to adapt for this reason; although, it’s definitely different writing these in English versus Japanese. All in all, it was a fun project and one I really enjoyed. I feel confident, that, if I submitted any of these to a poetry competition, I would definitely have a chance at winning! And, I definitely learned more about haiku and dirt in the process. Consequentially, I present to you, my haiku, on dirt.
The Rose 
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