They can be about love, seasons, sadness, the shortness of life. Tankas use strong images and poetic devices such as metaphors, and personification that haiku avoid. Basic tanka is five lines long, with the first and third being shorter than the second, fourth and fifth. A Haibun Dirt, rocks, clay, the whole earth curves to the half-lit sky. A buzzard, weightless, rises on the updraft alone like a girl among strangers.
Stars wash out as warmth colors the fields.
My eyes follow blooms slipping off my shoe, paused while I breathe on a path turning quietly hillside. Without my arrangement, the earth curves and turns. Renga are traditionally 36 stanza linked poems. Haiku show the essence of a moment where nature is linked to human nature. Haiku is written about common experiences and natural object.