SECOND NATURE: Salvaged Metal Sculpture and Haiku at Rockford Art Deli

Michael Zant + Tré + Thomas L. Vaultonburg
A benefit for Wild Roots

On October 2 and 3, Rockford Art Deli will host SECOND NATURE, an exhibition bringing together the salvaged-metal animal sculptures of Michael Zant and the haiku of Tré and Thomas L. Vaultonburg of Wolf Twin Books.

Created from reclaimed and repurposed materials, each of Michael’s sculptures will be accompanied by two original haiku—one written by Tré and one by Vaultonburg—inspired by the animal or wild creature it depicts. The exhibition celebrates the wild lives around us, the possibilities hidden within discarded things, and the idea that everything deserves a second nature.

Michael builds his animals from metal objects that have already lived one life. Chains become tentacles. Old tools become claws, wings, legs, and bones. Parts once designed for work or machinery are rearranged until they begin to resemble something living. The finished sculptures retain the history of their materials while acquiring personalities of their own.

The haiku approach the same animals from two different directions. Tré and Vaultonburg have collaborated before, most notably on Moonscape: Haiku Phase I, but SECOND NATURE gives that collaboration a new structure. Each poet responds independently to the same sculpture, creating a small conversation beside it. Sometimes the two poems occupy the same landscape. Sometimes they wander into entirely different worlds.

For Michael’s bear sculpture, Vaultonburg imagines a mother recording her family in the forest:

with one paw Mama Bear
carves in pine the names of
all five of her cubs

—Thomas L. Vaultonburg

Tré finds another bear who has become perhaps a little too comfortable around people:

veteran camper—
a black bear sitting
at the picnic table

—Tré

A sculpture with chains for tentacles inspired a pairing that moves from the history of the material into the strange physical presence of an octopus:

old chains
remembering how
to be tentacles

—Thomas L. Vaultonburg

tasting the shape
of my face
all eight arms

—Tré

These poems will not be presented as conventional framed pieces hanging at a safe distance from the art. They will appear on small, simple displays beside the sculptures. The presentation is intentionally modest and low-tech, allowing the salvaged metal, the animals, and the words to remain the center of attention.

The project grew naturally from the shared interests of the three artists. Michael Zant transforms discarded materials into representations of living creatures. Tré and Vaultonburg write poems grounded in animals, seasons, observation, and the Midwestern landscape. Together, the sculptures and haiku ask viewers to look again—not only at things that have been thrown away, but at the wild lives that continue around us whether we notice them or not.

SECOND NATURE is also a benefit for Wild Roots. Copies of Vaultonburg’s 2026 haiku collection, Vanished Roads, will be available at Rockford Art Deli, with $10 from every copy sold there donated to Wild Roots.

The exhibition is part of Rockford’s Fall ArtScene and is free to attend.

SECOND NATURE
Salvaged Metal Sculpture & Haiku
Michael Zant + Tré + Thomas L. Vaultonburg

Friday, October 2, 2026: 5–9 p.m.
Saturday, October 3, 2026: 4–9 p.m.

Rockford Art Deli
402 E. State St.
Rockford, Illinois

Admission is free.

More information: Rockford Art Deli

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Vanished Roads: Making a Haiku Collection Tell a Story

One thing that mattered to us from the beginning with Vanished Roads was that it become a whole book, not simply a stack of haiku that happened to have the same author's name on them.

                    

That distinction might seem small, especially with haiku. A haiku is designed to survive on its own. It has its own little weather system, its own moment, its own beginning and ending. You can open a collection almost anywhere, read one poem, close the book, and theoretically you have experienced something complete. There is nothing wrong with making a collection that way. But that wasn't what I wanted Vanished Roads to be.

The poems had accumulated over a long and difficult period of my life, and when I began looking at them together I realized they weren't actually separate. Certain things kept returning: abandoned places, animals, roads, weather, objects people had discarded, small signs of persistence, and moments when the natural world seemed to be quietly reclaiming whatever human beings had left behind. More importantly, the emotional atmosphere of the poems changed. There was movement in them.

Once I saw that, sequencing became part of the writing.

The book begins in a darker and more enclosed place and gradually moves outward. It doesn't suddenly announce that everything is better. I wouldn't have believed a book that did that, and I certainly couldn't have written one. Instead, little openings begin appearing. The world becomes visible again. Animals arrive. Light changes. Humor returns. The landscape starts becoming something other than a backdrop for loss.

That same movement became important visually.

Tré's cover for Vanished Roads isn't simply packaging placed around the poems after the fact. The enormous tree, the narrow passage through it, the distant light and the road continuing beyond it all belong to the same journey the poems are making. Her illustrations throughout the book work the same way. We wanted the visual and poetic elements to feel as though they had grown from the same landscape.

That's why Michael Dylan Welch's description of Vanished Roads as a “well-designed haiku collection” pleased me so much. He also described the experience of reading it as one of “enjoyable patience.” Both observations get at something we were consciously trying to accomplish. The book isn't asking the reader to race toward a conclusion. Its changes happen incrementally, poem by poem, image by image.

Maybe that's appropriate for haiku. Emergence doesn't require a trumpet blast.

Sometimes it's just the next thing you notice.

Vanished Roads by Thomas L. Vaultonburg, with cover and illustrations by Tré, was published by Wolf Twin Books in 2026.

Vanished Roads at Wolf Twin Books

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Vanished Roads By Thomas L. Vaultonburg Definitive Bibliography

 

Vanished Roads: The Haiku of Thomas L. Vaultonburg

Vanished Roads is a collection of 104 haiku and short poems by Thomas L. Vaultonburg, published in 2026 by Wolf Twin Books, with cover and interior illustrations by Tré.

Written across several years, the poems move through woods, prairies, abandoned roads, small towns, grief, solitude, humor, aging, memory, and renewal. Animals wander freely through the collection—coyotes, deer, bees, wasps, dragonflies, and snakes—but the landscape of Vanished Roads is as much interior as physical. The natural world continually intersects with human experience until the distinction between the two begins to disappear.

Loss is present throughout the book, but Vanished Roads is ultimately less interested in mourning what has disappeared than in discovering what remains. A bee trapped against a window, wind passing through bamboo, an empty chapel, snow covering a trail, or a bucket reflecting the night sky can become an occasion for revelation.

The poems range from traditional haiku to senryu and extremely compressed lyric poetry. Some contain seventeen syllables. Some contain only four words. Rather than treating haiku as a rigid syllabic exercise, Vanished Roads approaches it as a way of paying attention: reducing a moment until only the essential image, movement, humor, or emotional residue remains.

Each poem occupies its own page, giving even the smallest poem room to breathe. Tré's sparse black-and-white illustrations appear throughout the book, extending the quiet, strange, and sometimes playful world of the poems without overwhelming them.

Since its publication, Vanished Roads has received five reviews and responses remarkable not only for their enthusiasm, but for the different aspects of the collection each reader discovered.

What Reviewers Have Said About Vanished Roads

Conrad Sienkiewicz

“What Vaultonburg can do with merely four words is impressive and enviable!”

“Vaultonburg's best efforts can comfortably rest alongside those of other haiku masters, such as Basho and Issa.”

Magedah Shabo

“In Vanished Roads, loss and grief are less like endings and more like thresholds to discovery.”

“Reading Vanished Roads has left me with the sense that there is still more to discover and say ‘yes’ to, both in haiku and in the world around us.”

Mark Tate

“Vaultonburg has masterful touch as well, readers will admire his succinct whisperings.”

“He not only sees, he inhabits the object along his journey.”

Melanie Medved

“This is truly some of the most recent memorable poetry I’ve experienced in years.”

“40 years and thousands of poems later, it’s hard to recapture the joy that I felt in that classroom of my first favorite poem, and yet, Thomas Vaultonburg has handed me that joy again with Vanished Roads.”

Sean Wright

“Vanished Roads is an immensely satisfying collection that rewards both casual reading and close study.”

“In an era when so much short-form poetry can feel interchangeable, Vanished Roads possesses something rarer: a coherent artistic personality.”

“Highly recommended.”

Selected Haiku from Vanished Roads

say yes
to the sunlight
when it finds you

cracked birdbath—
the sparrows drinking
from several skies

fallen oak—
more places now
for mushrooms

abandoned glove—
a field mouse
renting the thumb

bucket of stars—
someone left it
under the moon

About the Book

Vanished Roads contains 104 haiku and short poems by Thomas L. Vaultonburg, with cover and interior illustrations by Tré. Published by Wolf Twin Books in 2026, the collection explores nature, solitude, grief, humor, memory, and the unexpected ways the world continues after loss.

Title: Vanished Roads
Author: Thomas L. Vaultonburg
Illustrations: Tré
Publisher: Wolf Twin Books
Publication year: 2026
Format: Paperback
Price: $15

Vanished Roads is available directly from Wolf Twin Books.

Buy Vanished Roads from Wolf Twin Books

More information about Thomas L. Vaultonburg, his books, poetry, publications, and other work is available at his author website.

Library of Congress 

Goodreads

Google Books

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Say Yes To The Sunlight When It Finds You

Sometimes the sun just finds you. Sometimes you need go on a journey to get to the place where the sun finds you. Either way, say yes to the sunlight when it finds you. 

Say Yes to the Sunlight When It Finds You, acrylic painting by Thomas L. Vaultonburg, 2026. Based on an illustration by Tré from the haiku collection Vanished Roads.

My sunlight

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