Over eating and over using words

On the Sunday before the state appointed day for thanksgiving, our family gorged  on turkey, ham and and stuffing; fruit and vegetable salads; pumpkin, ground cherry and shoofly pies topped by ice creams of several kinds, and drank our choices of teas, coffees and sweet concoctions. As we indulged our appetites,  businesses were scheming to take advantage of our drowsiness and lure us to consume still more. For the promises deals of Black Friday will surely follow Thursday and we are expected to be turkeys, and follow with no questions asked and borrow, if necessary, to buy their bargains.

Food is necessary to keep on living, and I might be judged for my obesity. I like food and I am also a logophile, i.e. I like words so much that I am some times guilty of  circumlocution and periphrasis (recently learned words I expect never to use again) i.e., I am roundabout, not forthright in my use of words.  As I overeat food, I tend to overuse words.

This is a long way of explaining my use of Haiku, an ancient form of Japanese poetry. This unique poetry is limited to only three lines containing only seventeen syllables always arranged with five syllables in the first line, seven in the second line, and five in the third line.

After I decide in my mind the subject and purpose of a post, I begin by writing the seventeen syllables that evolve into the concluding haiku. As I write the post I return again and again to the haiku to refine it. I have found that the exercise disciplines me, defines my thoughts and guides my writing.

Classical Haiku is based on some aspect of nature as in these seventeen syllables that I have just written:

It’s cold this morning
Consistent with the season
Coming snow chills me

But I am free to create my own themes and write of matters that seem more important to me than nature. My style of writing is evolving.  I browsed through several years of posts to find the one in which I described how I composed them. I did not find it  I end this post with seventeen syllables that sum it up:

Haiku is short form
of Japanese poetry
that disciplines me