A few more haiku attempts...

on the 15.45
we are stationary
Doncaster moves

and if you want to make it 7,5,7:

we're stationary
on the 15.45
but Doncaster moves

which prompted a play on words:

we're stationery
enveloped in fog
and undelivered

while along the way:

not silver but white
trackside birch
bright amidst grey

or bright amidst (amid?) the grey.

As I said at the beginning, haiku ain't easy.

Not very holiday-like with rain lashing down - but the garden is loving it. Clutching my hat as we walked through the Ferens Art Gallery to view the new huge David Hockney, I felt a shiver of recognition - brought on by the damp feel of the fabric.

cap in hand
damp peak
reminder of summer weather

cap in hand
damp peak reminder
of summer weather

- even shorter than your average haiku! 

The hawk - pigeon experience now seems a long way off - and turned into a sonnet anyway - so perhaps that's as much as I can hope for...  Is there something about a haiku which needs to be more instant than the emotions recollected in tranquility?  I done know - but there is something of the 'moment', the snapshot, I feel.   The experiences of Orkney, Skye and the highlands between and beyond are still with me, of course but hardly new and fresh.   Another anxiety about haiku (not that it usually worries pupils) is coming u with something pithy and meaningful...

ancient stones,
builders long ago departed
same sky, same stars

you ancient stones,
your builders long departed
we share the same sky

ancient standing stones
your builders long departed
we share the same sky

actually fits the so-called traditional 5-7-5 pattern.  However, I'm still fiddling with it.

ancient standing stones
your builders long departed.
we stare: sames stones, same sky

I realise this could go on for some time...

Plenty of stimuli and lots of notes and sketches.  However, I didn't sit down and write ANY poetry.  Perhaps this is the phase writers refer to where ideas are just cooking, brewing...  Or maybe my brain was on holiday too, which seems fair enough.  More soon....

Seems I'm going to have to take this haiku on holiday.  Perhaps the Scottish lochs and Orkney Isles will refresh the creative juices...

Of course the right word/s become/s more crucial than ever.
 
Talons pin pigeon
beak stabs and tears
Feathers discarded
Hawk eats

Four lines. But you can always cheat:

talons pin pigeon
beak stabs and tears, feathers
discarded: hawk eats

which is almost 5,7,5 but as we know, that’s not the point. Apparently (listening to Caroline Gourlay on Stephen Fry’s ‘English Delight: brevity’) our versions in English should be even shorter! 

log fire
turning in the flames
my watched thoughts

You can read more of Caroline’s haiku – and many others, here: http://haiku-presence.50webs.com/haiku/gourlay.html

My effort to be briefer

Pigeon pinned
Beak stabs
Hawk eats

is not especially satisfying, is it?

The present tense seems to be favoured in haiku, together with references to or images from nature of course.  Which to select, though?

Talons, claws rigid, implacable hold the pigeon down
Beak jabs, stabs into the breast
Fluttering ceases, life ebbs, is punctured
Beak tears at feathers and meat
Flings away feathers
Looks up between stabs, checks the garden
Around the predator and the prey birds call the alarm

'implacable talons'  I like but how to follow it?
Hold down? Pin?  Press?  the pigeon to the ground
Breast punctured, life ebbs.

I have to grasp the notion that I cannot tell a story. I have to capture a moment.  Which moment?

Talons pin the pigeon
Hawk beak stabs and tears
Feathers discarded

Not a very satisfactory ending.  The only line I like is the second - and that, ironically is only five syllables.

Browsing the bookshelves for something stimulating but not too heavy, I came across 'On Love and Barley - Haiku of Basho'. Now I have always found that writing haiku was hard. In schools I've often noticed that the counting of the syllables seems to dominate over the other characteristics of a haiku. The translation of haiku from the Japanese do not try to reproduce the 5 7 5 syllable count. For example:
    Friends part
    forever - wild geese
    lost in cloud

The event in my mind which I would like to use as the starting point for a haiku is the killing of a pigeon by a sparrowhawk which happened in our back garden a week or so ago.    Where to begin?  The only way I know is to assemble my observations, memories, feelings.

Talons, claws rigid, implacable hold the pigeon down
Beak jabs, stabs into the breast
Fluttering ceases, life ebbs, is punctured
Beak tears at feathers and meat
Flings away feathers
Looks up between stabs, checks the garden
Around the predator and the prey birds call the alarm