Haiku

It’s been a very productive Monday! I can’t say I’m not tired, or that I didn’t have trouble getting up before 7 am, or even that I didn’t fall asleep on the couch for 15 minutes while we listened to A Worm Story on cd, but we’ve stayed focused and gotten a FULL day of school done today. That is a great accomplishment! The boys weren’t as eager as I was to get it all done, and did a good deal of complaining and murmuring, but I can understand that after being free for so long. We had to do a lot of boring reviewing of math and Latin and phonics, so it took a little longer than a normal school day, and we are finally finishing up now at 5 pm. Thankfully, I have some leftover venison pasty and potatoes in the refrigerator, so I don’t have to worry about cooking dinner. I love leftovers. It takes so little effort to double a recipe and pop the extra in the freezer or fridge, only to save yourself the time and hassle of cooking some other night, when you need the break. Efficiency is a top priority around here!

Today we had poetry, and learned about the haiku. If you need a refresher from elementary school, a haiku is a form of Japanese poetry consisting of 3 non-rhyming lines, usually about nature, or containing a seasonal reference. The first line should have 5 syllables, second should have 7, and the third should have 5, for a total of 17 syllables. The syllable count per line doesn’t HAVE to be exact, but those are the rules for a traditional haiku. Here are two examples from our textbook.

Little hungry frog
resting on a lily pad
dreams of careless flies.

Gentle raindrops fall.
Reflected in the puddles,
thirsty flowers drink.

Haiku are usually calm lines that give you a gentle reminder of the nature around us. I should have known we would get nothing of the sort from my boys. While they did very well counting syllables and coming up with ideas, their thoughts were, well, not very serene. Jake’s turned out quite nice and non-violent, but the other two would have none of that sissy talk. They wanted excitement!

Jake:
Each night in the woods,
when wolves cry out to the moon
all nature hearkens.

Levi:
In the scary jungle
Dad’s big knife kills the cheetah
when it attacks

Luke:
In the scary woods
Dad shot the amazing deer
on Christmas morning.

You will notice that both Luke and Levi started with the same words, because it was just too good a beginning for either of them to abandon it. I gave them many alternative adjectives, but they both thought scary was the BEST one, and could not be swayed from it. Thankfully, they think very highly of their Daddy’s hunting skills! It doesn’t help that they have been playing Cabela’s Dangerous Hunts on the Wii, so Craig actually HAS been killing cheetahs and other massive attacking land animals with a big virtual knife. They are loving that game. Jake can hardly think of anything but when he gets to play again. It makes a very nice bargaining tool, I must say, but not a very good topic for poetry.

I always do the exercises with them, just for fun, but I chose to right about things a little more relevant to my life than wild animals. Well, now that I’ve ‘typed that out loud,’ it does seem relevant, but only in theory.

Under Heaven’s realm,
no sweeter joy shall I know
than baby’s kisses.

Leftovers warming,
filling the house with good smells
of relaxation.


Now, don’t you want to try writing a haiku? I’d love to hear some original lines!