Three Simple Lines: A Writer’s Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku

In Japan there are stories of great Zen poets writing a superb haiku and then putting it in a bottle in a river or nearby stream and letting it go.

If you read a lot of haiku, you see there is a leap that happens, a moment where the poet makes a large jump and the reader’s mind must catch up.

In just three lines totaling seventeen syllables (5–7–5), a haiku presents a brief meditation in which the reader or listener is invited to participate, using imagery drawn from intensely careful observation.