Perspective | Spring is in the air. So are my winning haiku.

Like a Chinese language spy balloon

When Vicki learn it to her husband, Bob, he had the same response.

“If I get fun out of him, I do know it’s a very good one,” she mentioned.

Vicki and Bob stay in Reston, the place they take pleasure in watching the seasons change exterior their again window — and the place Vicki enjoys composing haiku.

“I really like making an attempt to condense down a specific thought or expertise into the haiku type,” she mentioned.

Vicki loves condensing issues. She’s an engineer, a career that prizes doing as a lot as doable as effectively as doable. Vicki labored at NASA for twenty-four years, retiring in 2014. She labored on heliophysics initiatives: the examine of the solar.

Just like the solar, do you, Vicki?

“I really like the solar,” she mentioned. “I want the solar. The solar is superior.”

Engineering is numbers and information. Poetry is phrases and emotions. There’s no cause all of that may’t exist in the identical individual.

Stated Vicki: “The simplest communicators I’ve seen in my profession are those who can step again a bit of bit and take scientific info and current them in several methods — in a poetic manner, if you wish to name it that.”

Even so, the engineer in Vicki hesitated earlier than submitting one other haiku that I appreciated:

altering daylight to flowers

Scientifically talking, that’s not how prisms work.

“It’s a bit of little bit of poetic license there,” Vicki mentioned.

That’s the very best type of license, one which wants no take a look at, no ready interval, no age restrict.

Because of everybody who entered this yr’s haiku contest. Listed below are extra of my favorites:

Appears to be like down as if to chide me

Every like a miniature solar

— Elaina Palincsar, Alexandria

Vacationers suppose the magnolias

— Michael Sproull, Reston

Falling on new spring inexperienced grass

— Joanne Dyhrkopp Schar, Spencer, Iowa

Tenderly tickles the toes,

— Susan Dean Dee, St. Louis

very important locals sniff the air

and chirp, “In your left!”

— Martin Lawson, Fort Valley, Va.

— Madelyn Rosenberg, Arlington

Sturdy spring winds blow East

Finest time for nuclear battle

— Timothy Truett, Bethesda

— Emily Correll, Rockville

Rustling within the Winter wind.

The masks of winter’s malaise

— Betsy Tebow, Silver Spring

Shoulders bared, knees too,

Toes peek from final yr’s sandals …

— Catherine Howell, Arlington

Bombing yards with future timber

Scattered hopes now weeds

— Susan Williams, Vienna

creek surging over boulders

sings “Go on, Go on.”

— Naomi Thiers, Arlington

Present by means of woods half-dressed in inexperienced

The blue bed room of the sky

— Alex de Verteuil, Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies

Daylight bends in a brand new manner

— Grace H. Choi, Frankfurt, Germany

— Christine Riccardi Coker, Alexandria

underneath an obese moon,

— Kazimieras Campe, Edgewater, Md.

Illuminates every blossom,

— Ann Zuniga, Arlington

— Thomas Murphy, Fairfax

— Daniel Horner, Washington

Are you extra visible than poetical? Then you definately’ll need to enter my Squirrel Week Squirrel Images Contest. You could find the whole guidelines at wapo.st/squirrelphotorules. Mainly, I would like you to e mail your jolly, squirrelly JPEGs to squirrelphotos@washpost.com, with “Squirrel Photograph” within the topic line. The deadline is April 3.