Robin J Phillips

My mom reads poetry to me

My mom called this morning to read poetry to me. Yep. Sounds pretty perfect, doesn’t it?

Mom belongs to a couple of active women’s clubs .. and a book club. She’s busy. A member of one of her clubs asked others to write haiku for a meeting at the end of October.

Leaves turning golden
Days becoming shorter now
Summer has escaped.

That’s Joycie’s haiku. “It just came really fast,” she said. Don’t you love when writing works like that? She told me also that her clubmate had mistakenly said haiku is 7-5-7. Mom knew better than that. Hers is the traditional 5-7-5 count.

Wikipedia tells me that the Japanese say haiku has 17 moras (or on), in three phrases of 5, 7, and 5 moras respectively. Although haiku are often stated to have 17 syllables, this is inaccurate as syllables and moras are not the same. … but I digress.

Regular readers here will remember that my mom and I shared a love of haiku before. In April, we wrote a poem for the Denver Post’s weekly haiku contest: Bonded by daylight and the prospect of winning

During our talk today, my mom read this week’s Denver Post haiku winner’s piece to me:

Dad favors cherry
I prefer coconut cream
Will heaven have pie?

Mom, you can call anytime. Especially if you want to read poetry. And, yes, my heaven has pie. Back atcha, babe:

Mom, call anytime
with stories of pain or joy
always love haiku

Robin, Tempe

6 comments

  1. We have a great haiku competition to consider entering, whether 575 or freeform. ;-)all my very bestAlan2010 With Words Haiku Competition: weblinkPrevious results, with winning haiku and judge's commentary at:2010 With Words Haiku Competition Results: weblink.

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  2. Thanks, Alan. I'm going to share that with my mom. Now that she's started Haiku-ing, you never know where she'll go. We'll check you out.

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  4. Hi RobinJP,Please say hi to your mom from me, and all the best in her entering the world of haiku, which is great fun, as well as a stress buster, and way of life! ;-)Hi Dragonblogger,300 plus haiku a year certainly sounds impressive! ;-)Without knowing your work, and how you work in 575 I can't comment.But as you a tech person you probably know Dylan Tweney, Senior Editor of Wired.com, and who regularly writes haiku, and runs http://tinywords.com/ which publishes haiku and other micropoetry?Nothing wrong with 575 if there's no padding out of syllables, good line breaks and natural syntax.I'll have to respectively disagree though on your statement “…I just stick to the 5-7-5 even if it isn't true Japanese form, it has become the standard everyone expects.”all my best,Alan, With Words

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