A friend looked askance at me when I told her the syllable account was not very important for writing English language haiku. Emboldened by her formalism, I tried to fit my initial Haiku-like observation (at the bottom of this post — the order here is from latest to earliest) into a 5-7-5 pattern, with these results:
In the red polish
of the car door, yellow words:
the space is reserved.
The red polish of
the car yields these yellow words:
the space is reserved.
In the red polish
of the car door yellow words:
this space is reserved.
In the red polish
of the car door yellow words:
“Reserved Space 13.”
In the polish of
a car door the words “reserved”
(with the space number)
In the polish of
a car door is read “reserved
space” (With the number)
In the polish of
a car door the words “reserved space”
(With the space number)
In a parked car’s door —
the mirrored words “reserved space”
(With the space number)
In a parked car’s door
reflection reads “reserved space”
(With the space number)
In the curvature of a parked car door
the reflection of a neighboring “reserved space”
(and the space number)
It’s a little interesting how the effort to dwell within formal constraints will tease out new areas of consideration in the subject: the idea of color is not at all in the original but dominant in the later drafts; the idea of a reflection in the door, important the original, has been diminished by the end. An improvement in the later drafts, I would say, is that they make implicit the idea of a parked car, which is explicit in the earlier ones; and would add that the more formalism bends one to doing that, turning the stated into the understood, the more it recommends formalism as a practice.
.i`` * ^ / . . . . . ` `~ 