It's hard to believe that this is the tenth issue of Amaze: The Cinquain Journal. It has been a privilege to be involved with it. The poets whose work appears in Amaze have pushed the boundaries of the form and I look forward to seeing how the cinquain evolves over our next 10 issues and beyond.

Although I haven't been writing as many cinquains as I once did, I continue to be fascinated by the form and its possibilities. I have especially been interested in multi-stanza cinquains and the marriage of the cinquain form to prose, forming a new type of haibun. 

For a form with such strict requirements, it lends itself to all sorts of poetic explorations. In "The Best Thing About Snow", I wanted to play with the shift or turn that is the heart of haiku, yet retain the poetic "I" that is not typically associated with it. A multiple stanza cinquain allowed for that experimentation.

In the northeast, where I am from, fall is shifting into winter. The trees have shed their leaves and we await the first inevitable snow fall.

The Best Thing About Snow

At first
the requisite
grumbling; scavenger
hunt for boots, gloves, hat, scarves, shovels.
But then,

the trees
host a conclave
of crows, black inkblots smudged
against a bleak sky. And I stand,
forget

myself,
let snowflakes melt
on my upturned face, cry
out in the language of feathers,
waiting.

Lisa Janice Cohen
Webmaster, Amaze: The Cinquain Journal