Haiku in development

Hello:

I'm seeing from the Author's comment that this is a sort of work-in-progress. I'm guessing that there will be more haiku added as time goes on, but I'll throw out my thoughts about the three I see here now.

Seeing 3, I have an almost knee-jerk reaction to cut into the third line. You don't appear to be following a syllabic structure, so maybe "The sea breathes" would work just as well for the third line?

Also, I keep rereading the haiku, looking for the twist. I've read a bit on haiku writing and origin a few years back and I remember seeing how the haiku is strongest when it has a sort of "turn" between every line, with the first two setting up, and the third closing the poem up with a new twist. In other words, that a little more should be revealed with each line until the last gives a whole new perspective.

I think the second one comes closest to doing this kind of build-up-and-turn. A few thoughts occurred to me, though, and possible directions: if it were closer to morning (maybe 5am) and the verb were cut out (Shed), then the haiku could build the idea of someone dressing to leave -

until that last line revealed the truth and made the reader see the whole scene in a different way.

But even as is, I enjoyed it most of the three, even with it breaking away from the nature poem tradition. It caught me mostly because the language simply set up the scene without any romance, and the last, startling smile was just sweet. Simple.

The other two poems, I felt, worked with dramatic language to try and catch the mood, and that alienated me some.

For 1, have you played around with the idea of using "waves" instead of "hearts" in line one. That would pull this closer to nature, giving the piece two layers of meaning - one, the waves rising and falling. Two, the erotic hint underlying it all with that last line.

So yes, some thoughts. I hope, as a critique, this is more helpful and interesting than intrusive. Good luck with these and I hope you continue adding more to this deviation. Writing haiku always intimidated me, so kudos to you, brave soul! <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/l/l…" width="15" height="15" alt="" title="LOL" />

Cheers!