Friday Writings #6: The shorter the sweeter?

Greetings, dear wordsmiths! What have you been up to lately?

Me, I’ve been reading a very interesting book. (Interesting to me, anyway.) Someone in one of the haiku groups I belong to on facebook recommended it: Well-Versed: Exploring Modern Japanese Haiku, by OZAWA Minoru.

It’s expensive, even in Kindle. I wanted it anyway, to discover what Japanese haiku poets have been doing recently. (Haiku is a living form, not static but evolving.) As soon as I got it I realised the reason for the cost: at the beginning of each section, several incredibly beautiful colour photos.

The sections are New Year, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Seasonless. Altogether they contain 300 haiku (by 300 different poets) with notes explaining allusions which non-Japanese readers might not get, the sound values of the originals, and details about the poets. A final section consists of twenty haiku by the author, presented without notes; and I found the Preface and Afterword actually useful.

Prompt

This reading has inspired my (optional) prompt for you today:

Go micro!

(a) Give us your own haiku on any subject (for some of you, I realise, this will be nothing new!)
or –  if you hate haiku – or if you write them all the time and want to do something different – give us any other kind of micropoem (i.e. up to 10 lines) formal or free. 
E.g., for the formal ones (excluding senryu and tanka, which I'm sure everyone already knows) there are lune, American sentence, gogyoshi, cherita, sevenling, shadorma, monostich, elfje, etc. etc. Please label your piece for the form you're using. (Any 10-line poem may be labelled a decastich.)

Or:
(b) Try a 'short short' story of up to 100 words

You may present us with up to six micropoems or three short short stories in the one post. 

Unprompted:

Or else, instead of the above, feel free to do your own thing. You may give us anything you like, old or recent, in any form, on any topic. (The only stipulation is that if it's prose, please don't exceed 369 words.)

Then: Add your link (to your post, not just your blog) below, have fun reading each other's writings, and leave us a comment here if you'd like. (We'd like!) With a whole week available, you might like to pop back once or twice to see what gems have been added late in the week.

Advance Notice: For our last Friday Writings (before the end-of-year break), Magaly would like us to write a “Dear 2021” open letter, in verse or in prose.

Friday Writings #5: A Second(ary) Look

Hello, Word Artists and Admirers! I’m making good progress on the novel I’m working on. The bones are all there and looking pretty strong. I just need to fill out a bit more of the body to get this world to where I want it to be. Currently, I’m focusing on the secondary characters. Well-done secondary characters are like the seasoning in a good meal. They aren’t the focus, but they add so much richness to the final product (and as TV Tropes mentions, sometimes they get some killer songs in musicals).

Shiny!

Who are your favorite secondary characters? Let’s talk about it in the comments. Or if you are looking for a spark to ignite your words, feel free to craft your pieces from the point of view of a secondary character in a story (book, TV show, movie, etc.)

However you choose to shape your words, I’m taking poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction. Please keep your prose pieces to 369 words or fewer.

For Next Week: Rosemary will ask us for up to six micropoems (10 lines max per poem) or up to three short short stories of no more than 100 words each – all in one post, please.