Haiku: Spaceflight

In space, no one can hear you rhyme

This will be my 400th post on Medium, and I thought I’d do something a little different.

With traditional haiku, there is usually an element of nature and a season. That made me question how you write a haiku about outer space. In space, away from planets, there are no seasons as we understand them. You may have solar wind, but it is a bit different than the wind on Earth. And there are no frogs plopping about — so I’ve been told. Then again, maybe there are. I’m not sure if green-skinned aliens count.

So, I really have no idea if this is valid, but I’m doing it anyway. I created an image using the graphics program GIMP. Fortunately, I had a base image I’d done a while back to begin with, so it didn’t take too long. I modified my space probe and added a little color to the background to simulate wispy nebulae. Put an atmosphere around the planet with a Gaussian Blur. Then I moved the planet around a little. Easy-peasy.

And then a haiku (or two or three) was born. It may have also died. Serious or silly? I’ll leave that up to the reader.

BTW, most sources count three syllables for ‘alien’, though a few only count two, as in ale-yen. I went with the three-syllable count to make my haiku have the old 5–7–5 syllable count.