Haiku of the Day Theme for the Month of December 2025: City Haiku

I write this while sitting on my back porch of a two-flat in Chicago, overlooking an alley, a bunch of garbage bins and seemingly every electric and utility cable on the block, which all converge in a cluster over our little backyard. The occasional siren, the diesel grumble of buses and the loud clacking of the elevated train all fill the morning air. But so do the song of sparrows, the coo of a mourning dove, the skittering of a squirrel across the neighbor’s rooftop. At eye level are the tops and midriffs of oaks and maples. Cypress trees next door sway in the breeze.

One need not head to the country to find nature, but amid the built environment and all the hubbub which define cities, perhaps one needs to look a bit more closely, a bit more intentionally, to find it: to notice things that others do not or in a way that others do not.

Which sure sounds a lot like what haiku poets do.

The poems this month are all about “city life”-about the nature that is ever-present, those who inhabit our urban landscapes, and about the unique elements that make a city a city.

The Haiku of the Day feature displays a new haiku each day at the top of our home page. See also our Haiku of the Day Archive.

– David Green