On reading a “Haiku”


Five syllables start
A Haiku, then come seven,
And then five again.

Tradition be damned,
I’ll do six, then six again,
Then I’ll do seven.

It sounds a little off,
And rules can be so hard,
But is it really Haiku?

Who am I to say?
Structure is so confining,
It’s just poetry.

I could write prose,
Or a sonnet’s fourteen lines,
And not think so much.

But when I’ve done it,
Every beat accounted for,
Then I truly know,

Shrinking an image
To seventeen syllables.
Is worth the effort.

–Jim Gillaspy–