Five Haikus About Trying to Write Haiku

Last Monday the title of one of the WordPress Daily Post challenges caught my eye. It was about haiku, a poetry form I just love.  The challenge issued was to write five haikus – one for each of the five days leading up to today.

We were given the choice of writing one a day, or two one day and three the next, or five all in one day. Of course, I wrote all five of mine today, the last day of the challenge.

Ideally I would have spent more time thinking about and writing them, but sometimes you just have to get it done, you know? Progress, not perfection, I constantly have to remind myself.

But in any case, these little haikus are just about me tipping my hat to the art of haiku. Because haiku gets to the point. I like it.

The following haikus are a deviation from traditional haiku. Yes, they follow the five/ seven/five syllable format. But as the Daily Post Challenge explained,  traditional haikus tend to focus on nature. We were able to write about anything, but a really good nature haiku is hard to beat.

I did think about a haiku series on a banana cake (well, it’s sort of nature – there’s fruit in it), but in the end was running out of time so wrote a series of haikus on trying to write haikus!

The Haiku Challenge

now need to write five at once

not easy to do

 

Striking images

in a few eloquent words

harder than it looks

 

Would like to practice

carve and polish words that shine

so much else to do

 

Thinking as clock ticks

school pick-up time approaches

dishes still in sink

 

And now the phone rings

haven’t written one haiku

procrastination

 

How lucky is it that “procrastination” has five syllables?