Haiku Round-up #1

Lately I have been posting haiku to my Patreon.

While I was having trouble writing fiction, a friend of mine showed me a haiku they’d been working on. I couldn’t manage something like a whole story, but writing seventeen syllables of poetry came easily, and felt right.

These are only sort of traditional haiku. For one thing, I used English syllables instead of trying to adapt English words to Japanese morae which are similar to syllables, but not the same. I did use a seasonal reference in the first line of each, but they aren’t necessarily the kind of seasonal imagery that would have been used in a traditional poem. Also, I talked a lot more directly about what I was feeling, instead of using the metaphors to convey it.

However, I did try to convey the moments as I experienced them in that transient moment. I also tried not to revise, to just let them be in the moment they were. I think I cheated a couple of times, though.

I’m going to send out a haiku every few days for a while, at least until I run out of haiku. (I also wrote a couple of cinquains.) They aren’t necessarily in order, and they’re from a bit ago, so they won’t be a read on my direct emotional state, but I hope the words mean something to you

Here are the first nine:

Humid, intruding

hours that won’t shape into days,

heavy, unwelcome.

Night, that bit too hot.

He sweats and works and I don’t

know when night will cool.

Night is cooler now.

Restless nothings pace my mind,

private and anxious.

Bright green against blue.

Another day forthcoming.

I hope it stays bright.

Mimosa blooms fade.

I am content to watch them

this mild afternoon.

Berries dapple leaves.

They and I, windlessly still,

hope we are ripened.

White with slanted sun,

the too-bright sky is stolen

with painful glances.

Smoke taints blue-bellied sky.

All things contain their reverse.

No moment is pure.

School opens again.

I don’t know why I am sad.

Memories, perhaps.