"The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself." Henry Miller
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| Haiku: Watch A Blade of Grass - Above is a blade of flowering Zoysia Grass |
Watch a blade of grass
Dancing gaily in the wind
Teeming, green with life
Cut a blade of grass
Leaking all its life, turns brown
One perspective? Death
Nurture all our grass
Planting, feeding, in season
What we sow, love grows
This week, the prompt is: Grass
What is a haiku?
As Leo of Haiku Heights aptly explains, a haiku is a three line poem. It shows what the author wants us to understand from it, rather than tell it directly. The limitation to a haiku is seventeen syllables. It can be at maximum, that much. If you wish to go by the traditional Japanese structure even with English haiku, you can use a 5-7-5 syllable, or 3-5-3 syllable structure
In addition to the weekly Haiku Heights piece above, I have joined the haiku poets of Carpe Diem to work on writing Ten Renga. According to Kristjaan of Carpe Diem, "a Tan Renga is a short-linked poem which has two stanza, the first stanza has 5-7-5 syllables (the haiku assigned) and the second stanza has 7-7 syllables (I write it). The second stanza is a response on the first and has to have a 'kind of link' with the first stanza, but it can also be completely different say 'a kind of reaction or answer' on the first, but there always has to be, in some way, a 'link' with the first stanza."
See more on this form of haiku below.
