A haiku poem consists of three lines, with the first and last line having 5 moras, and the middle line having 7. A mora is a sound unit, much like a syllable, but is not identical to it. Since the moras do not translate well into English, it has been adapted and syllables are used as moras.
Haiku started out as a popular activity during the 9th to 12th centuries in Japan called “tanka.” It was a progressive poem, where one person would write the first three lines with a 5-7-5 structure, and the next person would add to it a section with a 7-7 structure. The chain would continue in this fashion. So if you wanted some old examples of haiku poems, you could read the first verse of a “tanka” from the 9th century.
Here is an example of the haiku of Basho Matsuo, the first great poet of haiku in the 1600s:
*An old silent pond…
A frog jumps into the pond,
splash! Silence again.
*
Here is an example of the haiku of Yosa Buson from the late 1700s :
A summer river being crossed
how pleasing
with sandals in my hands!
Here is an example of haiku from Kobayashi Issa, a haiku master poet from the late 1700s and early 1800s:
O snail
Climb Mount Fuji,
But slowly, slowly!*
Here is an example of haiku from Natsume Soseki who lived from 1867 - 1916. He was a novelist and master of the haiku.
Over the wintry
forest, winds howl in rage
with no leaves to blow.
Recent Poems
Following are some recent examples of haiku poems:
*Lily:
out of the water
out of itself
*
I walk across sand
And find myself blistering
In the hot, hot heat
Falling to the ground,
I watch a leaf settle down
In a bed of brown.
It’s cold—and I wait
For someone to shelter me
And take me from here.
Let’s make our own Haiku poems 
It won’t be difficult.
