Elizabeth Barrett Browning is probably best known for her question "How do I love thee?"

In her poem, she mentioned words that bring to mind a gamut of sensations and emotions - breadth, height, reach, soul, tears, sight, passion, grief, right, praise, breath, smiles, need, faith....

This poem, like her other works, could not fail to trigger a response from the love of her life, Robert Browning:

I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett, -- and this is no off-hand complimentary letter that I shall write, --whatever else, no prompt matter-of-course recognition of your genius and there a graceful and natural end of the thing....

Given the warp speed at which most of us go about our daily lives, perhaps not many of us have the time to compose verses of such beauty.... and then twiddle our thumbs as we wait for the reply, meanwhile mentally composing or next love-letter.

Rather than counting the "ways" in which Elizabeth loved her Robert, then, we will turn to another number -17 - which is the number of syllables in a traditional Japanese haiku.

The number 17 is the seventh prime number. It is the sum of two ‘perfect' numbers (seven, signifying spiritual perfection, and ten, representing physical perfection). Henry Blanquart goes in the same way telling that it "represents the junction between the material world and the spiritual world".

Abu Musa Jābir ibn Hayyān, the Muslim Persian alchemist and Sufi, teaches that the form (sura) of any thing in the world is 17; the number 17 represents the base of the theory of the Balance and has to be considered as the rule of the balance of each thing.

The above is merely happenstance, because haiku existed long before people began playing about with numbers, trying to find hidden meanings with every single digit and multiple thereof.

Haikus are the ultimate way in which to express feelings of attraction, and ultimately love, towards someone. The essence of haiku is to evoke and share moments of awareness with the readers. It is not what you feel, that matters - but what you can squeeze into your seventeen syllables that does.

As a corollary, if your seventeen-syllable snapshot of time can provoke empathy, compassion, reminiscence, anticipation, by saying what is (using the present tense), even though this may be through your own emotions, you will have succeeded.

Traditional haiku contains a kigo (about 6,000 words that indicate the season in which the haiku takes place in the Year of Life). Playing about with this would produce:

It is only in non-Japanese haiku that each verse begins with a capital letter. Yet, let us for the nonce forget all the rules, and concentrate on writing a "blank verse" series of haiku... on a sheet of tea-stained paper that is then rolled up and placed inside a bottle instead of an ordinary shop-bought card. What will be constant is the 5-7-5 syllable pattern - which some modernists eschew because they say it makes for a "stilted" result in English.

We could start with something in the language of Elizabeth Barrett Browning herself:

And continue with whatever tickles our fancy...