The NaPoWriMo prompt suggested we “write a curtal sonnet. This is a variation on the classic 14-line sonnet. The curtal sonnet form was developed by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and he used it for what is probably his most famous poem, “Pied Beauty.” A curtal sonnet has eleven lines, instead of the usual fourteen, and the last line is shorter than the ten that precede it.”

Now, I have written quite a number of sonnets, but lately it’s haiku that captures the day for me. Sometimes I’ll take some scrap of stalled poem and squeeze out what it’s about into haiku because it leaves out all the fluff and nonsense.

Having said all that, tomorrow is National Haiku Day, April seventeenth of course, and I was already thinking about how to spend tomorrow doing extra haiku in amongst all the other stuff that’s come together on a Sunday in April. I had already started some haiku on the topic of haiku day when I read the prompt and wondered if that could work. So here it is, my apologies to Gerard Manley Hopkins and anyone else.

April seventeenth, two thousand and twenty-two
Easter, Pesach, Ramadan and it’s haiku day!
yearly haiku day, just seventeen syllables
seventeen is all, perhaps hard to start
but once you’ve written the first, they get easier
soon everything comes unfurling in seventeens.

Five seven and five. less traditional?
an American sentence modern seventeen
whatever you see or hear or do, Haiku Day,
distilling the world, capturing just the essence
open your ears – write!

and finally an example of why you don’t weed gardens until plants are recognizable. First spread of the several years old patch of virginia bluebells