Senryu, Haiku, Or Just Short Three Lined Records Of Moments …

I know a little bit about the two Japanese Poetry forms mentioned in the title of this piece, but wouldn’t call myself an expert.

Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

I’m not Japanese, for starters, I’m Australian, and while I am interested in a few Japanese things — the poetic forms already mentioned, plus Tanka, and Haiga for instance.

I’m also interested in Bonsai, another Japanese word that one, related to those tiny trees, that are artistically groomed to appear to be extremely old trees. I actually have a collection of Bonsai trees in my garden, styled by my husband and myself.

And Japanese food is of some appeal too, but I know even less about this one, really. And with Japanese food strongly leaning to raw fish, that cuts a lot of it out for me, because I don’t eat fish, or seafood, which both feature in a lot of Japanese food items.

I like Yakitori and Tempura though, both non fish Japanese foods, which are popular in their native Japan …

Anyway, back to the original reason for writing this piece. I have written two short pieces, and posted them both to my Facebook page, this one last night:

Electrical storm -
Lightning thrills us, but thunder?
Missy shakes with fear …

And this one this morning.

Missy on chair snores,
birdsong outside. Click of ring
against coffee cup …

As you can see, nothing special, but they do have the look of those two Japanese poetry forms, in the Senryu style because they focus more of people rather than Nature, although both certainly have references to Nature, with the storm of the first poem, and the birdsong of the second one. And of course Missy is an animal, a dog in fact.

I was glad last night that she eventually settled down and slept, but she was quite distressed with the thunder happening just before bedtime. So I recorded both of these events, Missy being frightened, and then Missy obviously settled down enough the next day, to be snoozing, with not a fear in the world.

We love our dog Missy, we bred her, fourteen years ago, and she was in our final litter of…