On a November night in Panthertown Valley, I wrote my first haiku. Inside a camping tent, a friend taught me the basic syllable structure known as “5-7-5”.

Three years later, I was brought up to speed on advanced techniques by a poet named Bob. The Panthertown lessons glossed over flexibilities and intricacies within Japanese forms, but my friend did comment to themself in that 2016 tent, “5-7-5 will get him started…”

In 2021, Twitter offered me a community for poetry. More specifically, it offered a community for haiku. I could send out experiments and get immediate reactions.

There was a Zen-like reward to how a single retweet was more satisfying than 45 likes on an Instagram poem. A lot from a little. However, in 2022, I took a much-needed break from social media, which led to a discontinuation of posting new content.

The haiku I shared on Twitter from 2021 to 2022 almost went missing. In an attempt to rectify the near loss, I collected and selected from the haiku I posted. Seen below are some examples.