I was about to cross the street when I noticed a pattern all too familiar — 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables. A haiku.

I was taken aback and, out of excitement, pulled my friend out of traffic for her to see it. I was ecstatic.

You see, haiku have been a thing. I wrote three of them the day before and was already in the practice of counting my thoughts’ syllables. Now, the syllables were in front of me.

This haiku is by John Morse and is part of the NYC Department of Transportation’s Curbside Haiku, a safety education program and public art campaign that’s dispersed throughout the city.

It was a weekend of poetry, and I could not have been happier.