Though intended for young readers, this is a clear explication from which those of any age may learn. Indeed, the mature reader must learn -- as Matsuo Basho, the most famous of haiku poets said -- to write haiku with the "eyes and heart of a child."
What Basho meant was not only to be innocent, open and fresh. He also meant being able to see things as they are and not as we think or expect them to be. Childhood is the season during which this is possible. Maturity, when all things must have a use, insists upon a learned version of the world. Yet this is only one version, and there was also an original -- this is what haiku can suggest.
In teaching haiku, Patricia Donegan describes childlike directness and suggests ways in which it can be apprehended. The haiku's form, for example, conventionally three lines long, here depends not upon syllable count but upon its length. It should be "one breath long."
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