Invisible Castle: The Collected Early Haiku

These haiku do not adhere to the rules of classical haiku. They are not all seventeen syllables long, and they don’t all use a word to denote the season. They are in the style of many modern Japanese freeform haiku.

So what rules do I follow when I write haiku? There are four. A haiku must be little on the outside, meaning short. A haiku must be big on the inside, meaning roomy. A haiku must be full of something — energy, matter, space or time will do. And a haiku must be full of nothing: it can contain energy, matter, or time, but it always has to contain space, and preferably lots of it.

In this way, haiku reflect our own being, for as science tells us, what we are is mostly empty space.