At least that is the case in Haiku poetry. For too many reasons I have not read poetry for a long long time, and just a while ago I had a nice surprise waiting in my mailbox: a distant long lost friend of mine had sent me a couple of his own poems, which were very haikuish indeed, in free format. I was so inspired by this that I wanted to try it myself, too! It is much harder than I thought, and my outcome of the exercise was a bit forced I admit. I played around with litanies of words and hoped it would turn out to something snappy..

I guess the best haikus are born from being alert and having all the senses open out in the world, or even here at my desk (!) and one should be thinking actively in ‘haiku terms’ – taste the words and impressions and be playful… it must take a while before this comes a habit. I’ve noticed that my own thoughts flow much better when I am sitting in a moving vehicle – tram, train, whatever. Don’t ask me why.  

My first experimental haikus are about the nature and the winter, the latter just seems to be lurking in my mind a lot these days don’t know why, maybe it’s my hypersensitivity to climate changes and light? Anyway here is one to share:

Pines stand in silence 

in Arctic Circle night

   – and crack noisily!

This should be self-explanatory but just a little comment: It’s an image carved in my mind from a cold day – or night, can’t remember - in the North, so cold that the complete silence of the forest is broken only by the echoes of cracking wood. If you have experienced this kind of cold you know what I’m talking about.