The bee staggers home
exhausted from the harvest
dinner and dancing

Laden with pollen
he pirouettes on his heel
and dusts himself off

You’ve been drinking and
flying again ! says the fat queen
No royal jelly !

by Emmjay

… back story: so I attended a duo of Haiku classes at Sydney Uni continuing education.  Small class.  Very experienced and lovely teacher.  It were grand.

basic rules of haiku:

• three lines of 5:7:5 syllables  – let’s not be obsessive about this – after all, we isn’t Japanese, is we ?
• something that evokes the natural world / the season (did you know that aboriginal cultures often regard Australia as having six seasons – look it up – I was labouring under the illusion that at best Australia had 2 or three seasons, wet, dry with hot or cold variants – not necessarily in any particular order.
• a kireji – or cut.  – a breaking point where the poem whacks the reader a bit – see the last Haiku above – it has two cuts.
• there are other subtleties (like developing one’s own signature vocabulary – say using the word “arsehole” whenever the topic of Tony Abbott is on the table – you might like to use a different work for the same purpose – that’s up to you, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.
• so have a go – maybe read some translations of Basho, Buson or Issa – still top of the pops after 300 years or so……