11 Haiku

There was a time a few years ago when I wrote haiku--three-line poems with syllable limits on each line of five, seven and five--with fair regularity. I liked the restrictions of the form--you really have to think about your words when you only have a limited number of them to use.

That's not to say that the haiku below, written over a 10-year period, are any good. Some of them probably are. Some of them likely aren't. I'm not the one to judge, though. I'll leave that up to you.

Unrequited love:
a pain that never ceases
unless you move on.

There are three roses
in the vase on my table.
Only one is red.

Even in alleys
purple flowers can grow, their
fragrance swallowed so.

Barbecue grill smoke
pokes up through the branches of
the full locust trees.

The air is weighted
with the breath of storms to come.
Raise the shades and wait.

For the first time since
my father died, his orange
tree is bearing fruit.

Black cauliflower
heads of storms grow on the dusk
horizon, crawl east.

A woman I thought
I loved was at a party
I declined last night.

The rose sleeps in this
winter yard, only to be
awakened by May.

I bought a cactus
the day Dad died just to hold
something sharp, alive.

Breeze, gentle me this
dark--my mind is rambled and
sleep in nowhere near.