I was laying on the quiet green drinking a Gansett lager, when I saw a robin take three hops and then fly away. This scene inspired me to write a haiku:

Clouds block out the sun

Robin hops on the Quiet Green

Maple leaves rustling

This scene inspired me to write a haiku because it reminded me of a Haiku Jack Kerouac wrote.

Empty baseball field

--A robin,

Hops along the bench

This is why I love haiku. An image of a robin hopping is so simple, yet it creates a potent image that has burned into my mind due to Kerouac’s poem. I have grown up with robins all around me, and I have noticed that Robins hop, but Kerouac’s haiku made it something I am mesmerized by.

In “The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram” Sergei Einstein, a soviet film director and theorist, compares Haiku to the montage in film, and I think he is right. Montage is the perfect method to capture the present moment.

(As an aside, it is important that we spend more time in the present, in our daily lives and in the art that we create. Art is so focused on representing the past, which is depression and regret, and its survival in the future, which is anxiety and worry. The present is the only thing of true importance as it is the only thing we can control.)

Montage is the perfect method to capture the present, because in the present everything is happening at once.

Example from my seat on the Quiet Green:

The American flag flaps in the distance, recent graduates take photos in front of the Van Wickle Gate, A couple lays under a willow tree, ants are crawling up mu leg, a robin is hopping.

No narrative structure could capture all of these moment in a sensical way, (nor should one try) but haiku can. Haiku deifies the smallest moments, glorifies the humble. The present is humble. We plan for the future and regret the past, but rarely do we stop and enjoy the present. Haiku allows us to take a break and soak in the now.

The finch dives suddenly

Sun shines on the greek temples

Girl picking lilies