A haiku is a short poem, usually three lines in English, that holds one moment from the senses: two images side by side, a pause between them, and often a word that places the moment in a season. The 69 examples below are 28 published poems and 41 new ones. The published poems start with the classical Japanese poets (Bashō, Buson, Issa, Shiki and Chiyo-ni), given in romanized Japanese with a plain translation of our own and a note on what each poem does, and end with two early English haiku by Amy Lowell. The new poems, written for this page, are sorted by season and subject, with five senryu, five strict 5-7-5 haiku and a table of common mistakes, fixed.
If you want the method rather than the examples, the guide to writing a haiku covers what 5-7-5 counts, season words and the cut step by step. This page is for reading, and for borrowing techniques.
| Section | What you'll find | Poems |
|---|---|---|
| SectionBashō | What you'll findThe old pond, the crow, the rough sea, his last poem | Poems1–8 |
| SectionBuson | What you'll findStill lifes, a palace in a storm, a pawnshop | Poems9–14 |
| SectionIssa | What you'll findA skinny frog, a pleading fly, five feet of snow | Poems15–21 |
| SectionShiki and Chiyo-ni | What you'll findA persimmon, a sickroom, a morning glory | Poems22–26 |
| SectionEarly English haiku | What you'll findAmy Lowell's hokku from the 1920s | Poems27–28 |
| SectionBy season | What you'll findNew haiku for spring, summer, autumn, winter | Poems29–44 |
| SectionBy subject | What you'll findNature, the city, love, work, humor | Poems45–59 |
| SectionSenryu | What you'll findHaiku-shaped poems about people | Poems60–64 |
| SectionStrict 5-7-5 | What you'll findSeventeen syllables that earn their place | Poems65–69 |
Haiku by Matsuo Bashō
Bashō (1644–1694) turned the hokku, the opening verse of a linked poem, into a form of its own. His haiku are spare, often lonely, and full of journeys. In 1689 he left Edo with his disciple Sora on the long walk north he recorded in Oku no Hosomichi, and several of the poems below come from it.
furuike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizu no oto
old pond —
a frog jumps in
the sound of water
The most famous haiku in Japanese. The frog is the spring season word, and ya after the pond is the cut. In older Japanese poetry frogs were admired for their singing. Bashō gives us the splash instead, and the quiet after it.
kare eda ni / karasu no tomarikeri / aki no kure
on a bare branch
a crow has settled —
autumn dusk
One dark shape against the evening. Aki no kure can mean an autumn evening or the end of autumn, and the poem keeps both: the end of a day and the end of a season.
araumi ya / Sado ni yokotau / amanogawa
rough sea —
stretched across to Sado Island
the River of Heaven
The River of Heaven is the Milky Way, an autumn image. Sado was an island of exile, and the poem lays the whole night sky over the dark water between the coast and the island. Scale is the technique: a huge thing over a hard one.
samidare wo / atsumete hayashi / Mogamigawa
gathering up
the early summer rains, how fast
the Mogami River
Samidare are the long rains of early summer. Weeks of rain arrive at once in a single rushing river, and the place name lands last, like the river itself.
hatsushigure / saru mo komino wo / hoshige nari
first winter rain —
even the monkey seems to want
a little straw coat
Shigure are the cold, passing showers of early winter. The poet sees his own discomfort in an animal and laughs at both of them. The poem gave its name to the school's anthology Sarumino (The Monkey's Raincoat).
takotsubo ya / hakanaki yume wo / natsu no tsuki
octopus traps —
brief dreams
under the summer moon
The octopus sleeps in a clay pot that will be hauled up at dawn. The moon is lovely and the trap is already set, and the poem refuses to choose between them.
aki fukaki / tonari wa nani wo / suru hito zo
deep autumn —
my neighbor,
what does he do?
The season makes the poet notice a stranger on the other side of a thin wall. Loneliness is the subject, and the word never appears.
tabi ni yande / yume wa kareno wo / kakemeguru
sick on a journey —
my dreams go wandering
over withered fields
Usually read as Bashō's farewell. The body has stopped and the dreams keep walking. Withered fields are a winter season word, and the last thing he saw was the road.
Haiku by Yosa Buson
Buson (1716–1784) was a painter as well as a poet, and his haiku are often composed like pictures: a few objects, exactly placed, with the light already decided.
botan chitte / uchikasanarinu / ni-san-pen
the peony has fallen —
two or three petals
lying on each other
A still life with nothing added. The exactness of "two or three" and "on each other" is the whole poem.
tsuki tenshin / mazushiki machi wo / tōrikeri
the moon at the top of the sky —
passing through
a poor town
Who is passing through, the walker or the moon? The Japanese leaves it open. Either way the same light falls on the poor streets as on any others.
natsukawa wo / kosu ureshisa yo / te ni zōri
wading across a summer river —
what joy,
sandals in my hand
A rare haiku that names its feeling, and it gets away with it because the last line makes the joy physical: cold water, bare feet, sandals held up out of the wet.
Toba-dono e / go-roku ki isogu / nowaki kana
toward Toba Palace
five or six horsemen hurry —
the autumn gale
Toba-dono was a palace of retired emperors south of Kyoto in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The poem reads like one frame of a war story: urgent riders, a storm, and no explanation.
futamura ni / shichiya ikken / fuyukodachi
two villages,
one pawnshop —
the winter grove
A whole economy in six words. Nothing says the villagers are poor. The single pawnshop and the bare trees say it for them.
shiraume ni / akuru yo bakari to / narinikeri
now it is only
nights that end in dawn
and white plum blossoms
Plum blossom is the first flower of spring. A painter's farewell: the dark ends, and the next thing is white.
Haiku by Kobayashi Issa
Issa (1763–1828) had a hard life: a stepmother who drove him from home, years of poverty, and the deaths of his children. His haiku are the warmest of the four masters. He speaks directly to frogs, flies, snails and sparrows, and he is often funny.
yasegaeru / makeru na Issa / kore ni ari
skinny frog,
don't give up —
Issa is here!
The poet takes sides in a scuffle between frogs, and of course he picks the thin one, and he puts himself in the poem by name.
suzume no ko / soko noke soko noke / o-uma ga tōru
baby sparrow,
out of the way, out of the way,
a horse is coming through!
O-uma is a polite word for a horse, as if a lord's procession were on the road. The repetition is the poet waving his arms.
yare utsu na / hae ga te wo suri / ashi wo suru
don't swat it!
the fly is wringing its hands,
wringing its feet
A fly cleaning its legs looks like someone begging with folded hands. One close observation turns a pest into a fellow creature.
kore ga maa / tsui no sumika ka / yuki go-shaku
so this is it?
my last home —
five feet of snow
Five shaku is about a meter and a half. Issa came home after decades away to a house buried in snow. The poem holds relief, dismay and a joke in the same breath.
yuki tokete / mura ippai no / kodomo kana
the snow melts —
the whole village
full of children
The children are the thaw. Kana at the end is a cutting word of wonder, roughly "look at that."
meigetsu wo / totte kurero to / naku ko kana
"get me that bright moon!"
cries
the child
The harvest moon is an autumn season word. Issa quotes the child, and the adult's helplessness is left outside the poem.
jihi sureba / fun wo suru nari / suzume no ko
be kind to it
and it poops on you —
baby sparrow
Proof that the masters were allowed to be funny. The tenderness is real, and so is the bird.
Haiku by Shiki and Chiyo-ni
Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902) made haiku the usual name for the form and pushed poets toward shasei, sketching from life. He played baseball as a young man, was later confined to bed with tuberculosis, and kept writing until his death at 34. Fukuda Chiyo-ni (1703–1775) is one of the best-known women haiku poets of the Edo period.
kaki kueba / kane ga naru nari / Hōryūji
I bite into a persimmon —
a bell rings out,
Hōryū-ji
Taste and sound arrive together. The temple name closes the poem like the last note of the bell. Shiki published it in November 1895, and it is still one of the best-known haiku in Japan.
ikutabi mo / yuki no fukasa wo / tazunekeri
again and again
I ask
how deep the snow is
Bedridden, Shiki couldn't see the snow, so he kept asking the mother and sister who nursed him. The poem never mentions the illness. The repeated question does all the work.
keitō no / jūshi-go hon mo / arinubeshi
cockscombs —
there must be
fourteen or fifteen
The plainest poem on this page, and Japanese critics argued about it for decades. Is it nothing, or is a rough count of flowers in a garden the most honest thing a sick man could say? Read it twice.
aka tonbo / Tsukuba ni kumo mo / nakarikeri
red dragonflies —
over Mount Tsukuba
not one cloud
A sketch from life: red insects close by, a clear sky over a mountain far off. The near-and-far pairing is one of the oldest moves in the form.
asagao ni / tsurube torarete / moraimizu
a morning glory
has taken the well bucket —
I go and ask for water
The vine has wound around the bucket overnight, and she won't tear it, so she borrows water from a neighbor. Kindness shown entirely through what she does.
Early haiku in English
English and American poets started writing haiku-like poems in the 1910s. Ezra Pound's two-line "In a Station of the Metro" (1913), read closely in the haiku guide, is the famous one. Amy Lowell went further and wrote a whole sequence she called hokku. Notice that she counted syllables only roughly: the first poem below opens with four.
Last night it rained.
Now, in the desolate dawn,
Crying of blue jays.
Turning from the page,
Blind with a night of labor,
I hear morning crows.
The second is a writer's haiku from a century ago: the work, the exhaustion, the birds starting up outside. It also shows the period's habit of capitals and full stops, which most haiku poets have since dropped.
Haiku examples by season
The rest of the poems on this page are new, written for this guide. Each season below gets four haiku, and many of them find the season in modern life: pollen on a car, a power outage, a furnace kicking on. Most run 10 to 14 syllables. If you came for one season, the classical poems above are seasonal too: spring 1, 14, 15, 16, 19 and 21; summer 4, 6, 9, 11 and 17; autumn 2, 3, 7, 10, 12, 20, 22, 24 and 25; winter 5, 8, 13, 18 and 23.
Spring haiku
thaw —
the dog digs up
last year's ball
seed packets —
my father's handwriting
on the last one
pollen on the car —
a child signs her name
in yellow
frog song —
the empty lot
full again
The seed packets carry a whole story (a garden, a death, a spring without him) on one detail, which is why the poem doesn't need to say any of it.
Summer haiku
power outage —
the whole street
out on the front steps
heat wave —
the cat follows
the shade around the room
late July —
the lifeguard's whistle,
then only waves
fireflies —
the jar on the porch
with its lid off
The firefly poem ends on an object, not an action. The reader works out that someone let them go.
Autumn haiku
geese overhead —
the crossing guard
looks up too
the furnace kicks on —
last winter's dust
in the air
apple orchard —
a ladder left standing
in the moonlight
first cold morning —
the school bus idles
white at the curb
Winter haiku
snow day —
the only tracks
are the fox's
early dark —
one office light
on the tenth floor
New Year's morning —
confetti frozen
in the gutter
winter rain —
the bakery's light
across the wet street
Two of these are about other people without showing any: the fox's tracks mean no one went out, and the tenth-floor light means someone is still at work.
Haiku examples by subject
Haiku began as nature poems, but the moment can happen anywhere. Fifteen more, grouped by what they look at.
Nature haiku
low tide —
the heron lifts one foot
and waits
after the storm —
a spider rebuilding
between two mailboxes
mountain stream —
my cupped hands
ache with cold
City haiku
rush hour —
a pigeon walks
against the crowd
subway platform —
an open violin case,
three coins and a button
night shift over —
the street sweeper
and I nod
The button is the detail that makes the violin poem: someone gave what they had, or wanted to look as if they had.
Love haiku
our first morning —
two toothbrushes
in one glass
long marriage —
she finishes the crossword
he started
your side of the bed —
the book still open
at the same page
Three stages of love, and the word never appears. The third could be an absence of a week or a loss for good. The poem lets the reader decide.
Work haiku
Monday —
the coffee machine's
first gurgle
inbox at zero —
outside the window
a crow on the wire
last day at the job —
the plant from my desk
rides home on the bus
Funny haiku
deadline —
the cat asleep
on the warm laptop
diet, day one —
the fridge light
on my face at midnight
garage sale —
a stranger haggles
over my old trophies
Comedy in haiku works the way Issa's sparrow does: state the facts, keep a straight face and let the last line land.
Senryu examples
A senryu has the haiku's shape but looks at human nature instead of the season: vanity, office life, families, small hypocrisies. It is named after the eighteenth-century poet Karai Senryū and is often wry. If your haiku keep landing on people, you may be writing senryu, which is a perfectly good thing to write.
job interview —
I describe myself
as someone else
self-checkout —
the machine and I
disagree about bananas
gym in January —
by February
just the mirrors
group chat —
forty messages
and no plan
family reunion —
my uncle tells the story
with a new ending
Strict 5-7-5 haiku examples
The 5-7-5 count comes from Japanese, which measures sound units called on, and an English syllable usually holds more sound than an on. The Haiku Society of America's definitions, updated in 2026, say it isn't wrong to write 5-7-5 but that English-language haiku poets "abandoned syllable-counting decades ago." Teachers and contests still ask for it, though, and a strict count can be a useful discipline when every syllable has a job. These five are exactly 5-7-5. (English verse more often measures a line by its stresses; the guide to meter in poetry explains how.)
the lighthouse keeper's
logbook ends in mid-sentence —
one gull on the rail
a fresh coat of snow
on the abandoned car lot —
each price sticker gone
harvest moon rising —
the combine's headlights still on
in the far corner
my grandmother's hands
shelling peas into her lap —
the radio news
a paper lantern
drifting past the noodle shop —
summer's end tonight
Count them aloud. None uses a filler word to reach seventeen, and each still has a cut, marked by the dash. In the grandmother poem the cut sets the radio apart on the last line, so the room's background sound arrives after the hands.
Common haiku mistakes, fixed
Six problems that often weaken a first haiku. Each row shows the mistake and one way out of it.
| Mistake | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| MistakePadding to reach 5-7-5 | Beforethe autumn wind blows / and all of the leaves are falling / down onto the ground | Afterautumn wind — / the leaves cross the road / ahead of me |
| MistakeNaming the feeling | Beforelonely Sunday night / I miss my old friends so much / nobody calls me | AfterSunday night — / the group chat / quiet since May |
| MistakeA moral in the last line | Beforecherry blossoms fall / so beautiful and so brief / life is like that too | Aftercherry blossoms — / petals in the gutter / after the parade |
| MistakeA simile doing the work | Beforethe moon tonight is / like a coin dropped in the dark / of the river | Afterharvest moon — / the coins at the bottom / of the fountain |
| MistakeOne sentence chopped in three | BeforeI walked down the street / and I saw a cat that was / asleep on a wall | Afternoon heat — / on the garden wall / a cat poured flat |
| MistakeToo much in one poem | Beforesunset and seagulls / and my grandmother's garden / where we used to play | Aftergrandmother's garden — / the swing rope / worn smooth |
Look at what the fixes have in common. Each one takes something out: the filler, the named emotion, the lesson, the "like". And each one keeps a single concrete thing the reader can see. The moon-and-coins version still connects the two images, but it lets the reader make the connection, which is what juxtaposition means. The grandmother poem gives up the sunset and the gulls for one detail, and that detail does more than all three did together. For subjects to try these fixes on, see the poetry prompts.
If your own haiku live in one long document, the Strokes Assistant can read through it and list the poems that name a feeling or end on a moral, two of the mistakes in the table, so you know where to start revising.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most famous haiku?
Matsuo Bashō's old pond poem of 1686: furuike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizu no oto, roughly "old pond — a frog jumps in, the sound of water." It shows the classic shape in miniature: a setting, a cut after the word ya, and a single sound that makes the silence around it audible.
Why do translations of the same haiku differ so much?
Japanese haiku leave out words English needs, such as articles, plurals and often the subject. One frog or many, a pond or the pond, who is walking through the town: the translator has to decide. Some translators also try to keep 17 syllables, which forces extra words in. Plain, close versions like the ones on this page keep the images and their order easy to see.
How many lines does a haiku have?
In English, usually three: short, long, short. Japanese haiku are traditionally printed in a single vertical line, and some English-language poets write one-line haiku to imitate that. What matters more than the line count is the shape inside: two parts, a pause between them, and one moment.
Can a haiku be about the city, work or people?
Yes. Haiku have always included people, from Issa's children to Bashō's neighbor, and modern haiku find their moments on subway platforms and in offices. When a short poem is mainly about human behavior, with no season and a wry tone, many editors call it a senryu instead. Both are fine forms to write.
