The 1998 Challenge Applicants were asked to create an original haiku poem based on a biological theme. Haiku is a short, unrhymed lyric poem about nature. For this competition, students' poems had to conform to a structure of three lines containing five, seven, and five syllables respectively. Applicants were not required to follow other conventions of haiku. As the following two examples illustrate, the poem's biological message should have been engaging and conceptually correct.
Leaves sink to the earth non-green pigments now unmasked and the nighttime grows.
Here are the four winners and their outstanding haiku poems.