Dancing Dolphins

Sleek your silver backs

Divine elegance leaping

The ocean your ballroom

 

Author's Note

I don't know about this...my 1st attempt at Haiku

Reviews

[Raul Moreno]

Beautiful haiku you have penned, love the imagery. -R

[Marie Harrison]

Nice!
Well done
I love to watch
dolphins frolic
in the bay.

[Ruth]

Ohhh! This is beautiful! Dolphins hold such grace and spirituality...we could learn so much from them! This is full circle and emotive...such vastness to entertain their grace!
Wow!
xx

[An owl on the moon]

I still remember touching a dolphin when i lived in California.. the wondrous life and joyful beauty. You sing that to life again here!

[The Rock And Roll Cowbo..]

A divine writing for a divine creature.

[Joshua]

Extremely good haiku, especially for a first attempt.

[Tom Benson]

I like it Anne. I've tried various forms but I'm not a purist so I don't stick rigidly to syllable counts and meter etc. I think you've done a good job with this one.

[Larry Dyson]

excellent/

[Larry Dyson]

Sleek your silver backs

Divine elegance dancing

The ocean your ballroom

[Larry Dyson]

Syllables or "on" in haiku

Main article: On (Japanese prosody)

In contrast to English verse typically characterized by meter, Japanese verse counts sound units known as "on" or morae. Traditional haiku consist of 17 on, in three phrases of five, seven and five on respectively. Among contemporary poems teikei (fixed form) haiku continue to use the 5-7-5 pattern while jiyuritsu (free form) haiku do not.[9] One of the examples below illustrates that even the traditional haiku masters were not always constrained by the 5-7-5 pattern.

Although the word "on" is often translated as "syllable", in fact one on is counted for a short syllable, an additional one for an elongated vowel, diphthong, or doubled consonant, and one more for an "n" at the end of a syllable. Thus, the word "haibun", though counted as two syllables in English, is counted as four on in Japanese (ha-i-bu-n); and the word "on" itself, which English-speakers would view as a single syllable, comprises two on: the short vowel o and the moraic nasal n̩. This is illustrated by the Issa haiku below, which contains 17 on but only 15 syllables. In addition, some sounds, such as "kyo" (きょ) can be perceived as two syllables in English but is a single on in Japanese.

The word onji (音字; "sound symbol") is sometimes used in referring to Japanese sound units in English[10] although this word is no longer current in Japanese.[11] In Japanese, each on corresponds to a kana character (or sometimes digraph) and hence ji (or "character") is also sometimes used[11] as the count unit.

In 1973, the Haiku Society of America noted that the then norm for writers of haiku in English was to use 17 syllables, but they also noted a trend toward shorter haiku.[12] This trend is borne out by the winter 2010 edition of Frogpond, which contains haiku with an average of 10.5 syllables, varying from six at the shortest to 15 at the longest.

Some translators of Japanese poetry have noted that about 12 syllables in English approximates the duration of 17 Japanese on.[13]
just an intro note? ..