Four Haikus That Will Get Me in Trouble

A self portrait by famous 18th century Japanese poet and artist Yosa Buson

Lucky you! You get several bonus haikus today! I know, you can hardly believe your good fortune. All these haikus revolve around the same theme, my wife, Ruth, so I thought I’d just go ahead and include them all instead of doing just one. I genuinely hope you appreciate them because my amazing, yet reclusive wife prefers to live in anonymity, and I will probably pay dearly for posting them. Sorry, Ruth…sort of.

In case you don’t know much about haikus, here is a very quick and hopefully painless lesson:

• A haiku has three lines. The first is five syllables long, the second is seven syllables, and the last is five again. Notice that if the poem is translated from another language, the number of syllable will be lost.
• Haikus usually capture ordinary scenes from daily life. Not the grandiose or unusual. Here’s one of my favorite examples of this from Yosa Buson, a famous Japanese poet and artist from the 1700s. He wrote a haiku about getting sick from eating spoiled sushi:

Over-ripe sushi,

The Master

Is full of regret.

• Traditional Japanese haikus also often include what is called a “kigo”. This is a word which in some way refers to nature and/or what season the haiku takes place in. Things like cherry blossoms, rain, or even mosquitos. Here is one of my all-time favorite haikus, also by Buson, in which the kigo is a chrysanthemum. 

Before the white chrysanthemum

the scissors hesitate

a moment.

Above all else, the haiku form reminds me that the most beautiful and inspiring things are right in front of us all the time. They are hidden in plain sight, in our ordinary, everyday lives. Right in front of me, every day, is the most extraordinary woman, my wife, Ruth, so it seems fitting that I should have a few haikus about her.

I wrote this first haiku while sitting outside my school with my Creative Writing class. It was an in the early spring when the sun is just starting to feel warm again after a long, cold winter.

Sunshine warms the back

Of my neck and reminds me

Of a kiss from Ruth.

One thing about Ruth, is that I am not the only one that loves her. Everyone who gets to know her can’t help but love her. That includes mosquitos. For some reason, mosquitos will travel from miles around, bypassing countless other opportunities to feast on someone else's blood just to bite poor Ruth. This is good news for me. I never have to worry about getting bit as long as Ruth is nearby. She’s better than even the most potent mosquito repellent because they will always choose her over me. Here’s a haiku about a very satisfied mosquito:

A mosquito hangs

On the wall just above the

Bed, full of her blood.

Ruth is typically a very early riser. Very early. As in 4:30 am early. It’s a good thing, too, because I am powerless to leave the bed if Ruth is still in it. I just can’t do it. No alarm clock can get me out of bed as long as I still have Ruth there to cuddle with. That’s because:

My favorite place

In the universe is curled

Up with Ruth in bed.

One thing that most everyone knows about Ruth is that she loves to bake, and she’s very good at it. There’s hardly a week that goes by that we aren’t making deliveries of Ruth’s delicious cookies to someone in the neighborhood. Sometimes I feel like we are an entire family of Little Red Riding Hoods delivering baskets of goodies. In fact, for a while, Ruth and an equally talented friend ran a “cottage kitchen” bakery fittingly called “The Fairy Tale Bakery”.

Ruth's old bakery logo created by my good friend and talented artist Kurt Moulton

What most people do not know about Ruth is that she loves to punch things. Yep, you read that right. Sweet little Ruth can seriously throw a punch. I think she might have been a cage fighter in a former life. Luckily, she only ever punches me in play. These two seemingly contradictory talents, baking and punching, come together in the most remarkable and endearing way in Ruth.

Ruth makes everything

So much better with cookies

And a playful punch.