Zen and the Art of Haiku

April is National Poetry Month, so what better time for a lovely spring haiku? Here's one I wrote this morning --

Workmen on the roof
of my apartment building.
Every breath, hot tar.

OK, so it's not so springlike. A proper haiku should be about nature and provide a hint of the season of the year, and my little poem doesn't qualify. But it's honest.

You may know that a traditional Japanese haiku is a three-line poem with five syllables in the first line, seven in the second and five in the third. What you may not know is that there are other conventions to haiku besides the number of lines and syllables.

Haiku is, as this essay by Gerald England explains, "the distillation of a moment." A haiku should not use metaphor or simile; it should not be about the past or the future. A haiku expresses an intimate moment of experience. The be-here-now quality of haiku is what makes it a Zen art.

The form was developed by a Zen monk named Basho (1644-1694). The frog in the photo honors his famous haiku --

Old pond
A frog jumps in --
Plop.

What about the syllables? The five-seven-five rule doesn't always work with English. A haiku should be spare; there should be nothing extra. If you have to add words to adhere to the syllable rule, then forget the rule.

Here's one of mine from another spring.

Dogwood blossoms
fly in the wind.
Your cheeks are cold.

A haiku is a tiny poem that captures the sensations and mood of a moment. Give it a try yourself sometime.

Photo Credit: © Kirill Birin | Dreamstime.com