Haiku

My poems collapse:
no sonnets, only haiku.
Twitter is to blame.

Actually, that's not entirely true. My muses had already traded iambic pentameter for pithy-little 17-syllable fragments.

Twitter just made this wave more fun to ride out, with @baffled's one word haiku prompts.

It's advent, and I'm nesting... it's the time of winter when thoughts turn simultaneously to the fragility and constant newness of life. It's a time of bright solemnity and somber light. There is a time for analysis, and there is a time for simply holding on to paradox. A time for gestation.

Mine is still a very Western muse, but haiku makes for a good container to hold these thoughts as they grow.

Your fluttering heart
pulses blood as red as leaves;
only for a bit.

See what I mean? Incurably Western. Out of all the little 17-syllable poems I've been writing, I'm pretty sure that only one of them is really haiku-like at all.

A small pebble drops.
Ripples slowly fade away
from the still center.

The haiku muses seem to be fluttering away now, and I'm working on some prose and sonnets.

Prose, sonnets... and housecleaning. It's still advent, and I'm still nesting, awash in quiet wonder and anticipation. Waiting in the already-not-yet.

Tremblingly you gasp,
your small damp lungs expanding,
fill with breath of life.