Whatever It Is

by Ron Padgett

Much poetry is depressing

because it is about things

that have happened

and then been brought

into the poem to die,

whereas

the real poem lives in its own

little house that moves along

the landscape that moves

along the mind of the reader,

and no one has ever seen it.

From Collected Poems, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Coffee House Press, 2013, page 719. One hopes that a good haiku presents an image or experience to bring it to life, as if no one has ever seen it, releasing the moment rather than capturing it.