Haiku Like Poetry

Most of us learned in school that Haiku is a Japanese poetic form constructed of seventeen syllables in three lines.  Many of us have marveled at the way such poems can capture a great sweep of meaning in very few words.  It turns out that strictly traditional Japanese haiku are not seventeen syllables long but rather seventeen “on” and “on” are not exactly the same as syllables.  There are other rules to traditional haiku as well.

I’m sure I’ve never written a poem that Is a haiku in the strict sense.  I don’t even know for sure if it’s really possible in English.  But I’m fond of poems that are what I would call “haiku like”; short poems that juxtapose two ideas in a way that creates a new insight beyond either of the two ideas

At a church retreat some years ago I was guided to an exercise of walking in a garden (it was a lovely spring day) and finding some image that could be touched with a haiku like poem.  I was struck by a tree branch that was rugged, touch seeming, but sprouting new growth that was green and tender.

old wood creaks brittle

memory supports the

tender flame of liquid green

The poem captures for me the interesting contrast between the old, hard, brittle wood and the tender, almost liquid fresh spring growth.  And of course it suggests that the difference could be seen as one of memory, of experience.

I’ve written a few other poems lately that are haiku like to my mind.  They don’t always juxtapose two ideas, but they all seek to capture an insight, an intuitive seeing into things, in a few words and images.

Stone on stone rest

Where water forgot

Stream bank remembers

Rushing water

Laughs downhill

Heedless of knowing

Due bends the grass

Water seeking earth

Water resisting

Breathless glance

Treasure precious

Everybody wants to love

Trees whisper

Swishing streams reply

Motion is stillness

Crickets sing the

First star twinkling

Magic of the night

Soft breeze whisper

Twilight sigh

Sky slips into evening dreaming

Blue throated song bird floats

Between the worlds and so

The worlds are one

May we all be blessed