Someone recently gave me a marvelous, illustrated book of haiku, which had 15-20 poems from each of the four original, classical Japanese masters of the form, arranged in chronological order. As you may know, the four traditional, acknowledged haiku masters are:

• Basho (1644–1694)
• Buson (1716–1784)
• Issa (1763–1828)
• Shiki (1867–1902)

After reading the intro and the first few Basho haiku, I was hooked, and decided to binge-read the entire book in one sitting. Reading so quickly, one-after-another, I could not pause to reflect on most of the poems, but I began to notice patterns in the masters’ individual styles, detecting elements of precision, subtlety, and even humor.

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After reading the last of Shiki’s haiku and finishing the book, I closed and placed it on the coffee table. Looking toward the couch to my right, I was amused to see one of our cats mesmerized, staring at my wife knitting. The cat trembled with unwilling restraint as my wife gently protested, “No… don’t do it… please don’t sweetie…” Until, inevitably, the cat gave in to instinct and went for the yarn…

As you can imagine, the moment of cat vs. yarn, right after my haiku binge-read, inspired me to write a short poem about it. There’s no seasonal note in the title poem above or the two alternate versions below, so I guess that makes them all senryū… 🙂

The title poem above was the first thing that flowed out of my mind, flowing as a single sentence (as I am wont to do) with a classical kireji beginning word:

Fascinated—yarn-focused felines ignore the knitter’s protest.

A three-line poem version (not sure whether to put “ignore” at the end of Line 2 or beginning of Line 3) could look like this:

Fascinated—
Yarn-focused felines
Ignore the knitter’s protest.

Here are two alternate haiku versions of the title poem — aka Twoku & Threeku as I like to call them — with my “kireji” bolded at the end (Line 3) of each one:

Twoku:
Fascinated cats / exploring the knitter’s bag / entangled in yarn.

Threeku:
Yarn-watching felines / ignore the knitter’s protest / preferring to play!

Which version do you like the most?