Missing Haiku

"Judges Hiroaki Sato and John Stevenson have completed their work," a letter we received today said. "We now know the names of the finalists in the 2012 Student Haiku Contest. Entries were up nearly 50% from last year... From among these English-language entries, the judge selected 45 finalists in the four divisions."

The divisions were by grade. Annoyingly, the letter doesn't say the number of English-language entries, but it does say that 102 finalists were selected from those who wrote 800 Japanese-language entries. But anyway, "the poems will go on exhibition at the United Nations International School later in the school year.

"The following are the finalists selected from your school... Ann Stribling, Grade 3, Tyler Jovanovich, Grade 1."

The kicker is that, in an unusual lapse, we didn't keep a copy of Ann's English-language entry, and she can't remember how it goes, or I'd put it here. Ah, well. As far as I can tell, the prizes for winning, and for being a finalist for that matter, include only honor and glory, or, as the letter puts it: "special recognition during [an] Awards Assembly to be held at UNIS starting at 10 a.m., June 9, 2012."