Composing Haiku is a complex process. A haiku is born from an intimate notion you discover because it hits you at a moment of realization after deep contemplation of a scene. Then you must articulate this into words (and these words must be arranged in specific fashion). As you may guess, not all scenes inspire this kind of thing, and certainly, not everybody is impressed by the same things. So the fact that you are provided with a prompt picture leaves you in the hands of erratic muses.

I loved about this picture that the scene is located in the sea. The sea is one of my favorite archetypes because you can easily associate it to a variety of meanings and other archetypes: the sea as mother of all things, the sea as the keeper of the unknown (like the woods), and the sea as a path to other lives (a psychic instance). Let me provide some insights regarding my own creative process in this opportunity.

The picture was a bit stuffed (beautifully though, sure), so I tried to focus on the things that most called my attention. My first thoughts were of the sea, so I began to clean up the pipes so words could go through them and into the screen.

First of all, the sea is the mother of all things; in my case, the first thing that came to my mind was the stories embedded in the Beowulf: It was the sea who, like a mother, delivered Scyld Scefing (“Shield Sheafson” in modern English, the great first king of the Danes—another representation of Odin’s son Skjöldr) into the world. The sea presented the Danes with their salvation: a good king after long without any; his mysterious birth plus the gifts he brings along (his origin, unknown, the child had drifted while lying on a sheaf of wheat in a small boat) makes us think of the mytheme of the puer aeternus (a divine child, like baby Jesus Christ).

Having dusted the epic recollections (from where I think the opening "LO!" came from), the second thing that I thought about was the harbor. It is there when you leave, and it is just there to welcome you back. There is the mother again, then (or the wife).

The nets were definitely what I had been watching with more attention. They catch fish; they are also the means by which you can get to the abundance kept in the sea, for your hands are not enough. The nets allow fishermen to provide for more. This alludes to riches, yes, but also to a sense of community. So the idea of a bond came to me.

With all this in mind, I started to draft. And after a lot of thought and some editing and revising, there was finally a haiku for me to show. I hope it conveys at least a portion of all the feelings I went through as I was writing it.