It’s the season when we hear lots of complaints about excessive grayness here in Upstate New York — gray skies, snowbanks, slush, and moods. At times, the cloud ceiling is so low, it feels like we’re stuck inside a shallow, covered saucepan. I’ve always insisted that I don’t need blue skies to feel sunny (well, at my sunniest), and that gray clouds don’t make me blue. I’m sticking to that story again this year. Soon, I plan to write about another kind of graying (of the legal profession), but first, here are a few haiku to help prove that gray is okay:
orig. photo & poem, in Open Window
grey sky —
the dog’s water dish
iced over
visiting mother—
again she finds
my first grey hair
. . . . by Michael Dylan Welch – “visiting mother” – TAO
dawn–
shades of grey break
into birdsong
. . . . . by Pamela Miller Ness – The Heron’s Nest (Dec. 2000)
A gray dawn —
last night’s poker cards
facedown on the table
. . . . by Rebecca Lilly, from A New Resonance 2: Emerging Voices
low gray sky —
an afghan warming
on the radiator
three-quarter moon
black and gray shadows
cross the snow-covered lawn
picnickers fleeing
a slate-gray sky —
lilacs aglow
. . . . by dagosan – “low gray sky” – The Heron’s Nest (June 2006)
pink begonias
deepening
the grey fall
. . . . . by Barry George at simply haiku 
february grey
i remember chillies
in a sieve
barber’s sweepings
a touch of grey splits
man and boy
. . . . by matt morden at Morden Haiku
gray morning
the weight of mist
in Spanish moss
. . . . by peggy lyles
storm warning
the watercolorist works
in shades of grey
. . . . by Tom Painting from The Heron’s Nest 