My most recent post about poetry in this area was met with a spontaneous flurry of poems in the comment section. As a result, and at Tyler’s prompting, I thought it might be fun to invite readers of The Ojai Post to submit Haiku. To submit a poem or read others already submitted, simply click the comment link right underneath this article. If you already know what Haiku is all about, you can skip down there now to read and write some Haiku.
For those of you unfamiliar with the form, English Haiku is loosely based on the Japanese form from which it gets the name. In English Haiku, the only constraint is that each line have a certain number of syllables. It is actually quite easy: the first line must have five syllables, the second line seven, and the third line five again. That’s it. Three lines, twelve syllables total.
Traditional Japanese Haiku usually sprung from deep observation of nature. Often the first two lines are meditative and descriptive, and the third and final line of a Haiku presents some element of surprise or revelation, or perhaps a new angle on the subject. This is not always the case, but works well to delight the reader and hopefully leave them with a lasting impression. Here is probably the most famous of all Haiku by a seventeenth century poet named Bash?:

The old pond
frog jumps in -
water’s sound.

(Note: because this was translated from Japanese, the English version does not conform to the 5, 7, and 5 syllables rule. But it gives you a flavor of traditional Haiku.)
If you are interested, you can read more about the Haiku form here.