The Mysteries Within

Haiku & Senryu by Michelle Hoffmann

Some of life’s greatest mysteries are hidden inside its smallest moments.

A spiderweb sparkling with morning dew. The lonely call of a crow across distant hills. An old love letter fading with time. A cat stretching in the morning sun. An empty swing moving quietly in an abandoned park.

We notice these things, perhaps only for a second, and then life carries us onward.

The Mysteries Within by Michelle Hoffmann is a collection of haiku and senryu that asks us to linger for just a little longer.

Moving through all four seasons and across landscapes both wild and familiar, these poems explore the subtle connection between the world around us and the emotions we carry within.

Cherry blossoms bloom beside a stream. Fireflies dance through twilight. Winter lays its first snow across a silent earth. Waves arrive endlessly upon the shore. Ravens, foxes, wolves, sparrows, owls, and eagles move through a landscape filled with wind, moonlight, rain, forests, mountains, flowers, and stars.

Yet this isn’t simply a collection about nature.

Human life quietly enters the landscape, too.

There is the laughter of a child, the weathered hands of an old man, memories awakened by the scent of pine or woodsmoke, forgotten love letters, city lights, a newborn’s cry, a child’s first steps, and a candle slowly burning toward its final flame.

Through the traditional focus of haiku and the more human observations of senryu, The Mysteries Within explores beauty and loneliness, beginnings and endings, memory and hope, movement and stillness.

Again and again, the poems return to something we easily forget: nothing stays.

Flowers bloom and disappear. Seasons turn. Children grow. Stones are worn smooth by water. Light fades. Memories soften around the edges.

And perhaps it is precisely because these things don’t last that they become worth noticing.

The Mysteries Within is a collection for nature lovers, poetry readers, quiet observers, dreamers, and anyone who finds themselves drawn to life’s fleeting details.

Keep it beside your bed. Take it outside. Read a poem with your morning coffee or before the day ends. Open to any page and spend a moment there.

You may discover that the mystery isn’t something waiting far beyond us.

Sometimes it is already here—in the wind, the rain, an old memory, a passing season, or somewhere quietly within ourselves.