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could have kissed him and her, I was so happy. The “book of poems” was a thin, blue, silver-writing, thank-goodness, time warping Book.
    Jo thanked Zou with a bow. She turned to us. “That was fun. Maybe we’ll see you some other time.”
    “But quit messing around with the Auto-Translator,” said Samm. “It really wears on the Probability Mechanism.”
    “The what?” said Fred.
    “We will,” said Sam. “But what the heck is a renga, and how do we do one?”
    “Short verses linked together,” said Jo. “Each one connects with the verse before it. The whole thing tells a story by hopping around. But the good news is, The Book scans your recent time memory, then writes out the verse you are thinking. All you have to do is read it.”
    “We knew that,” said Fred, Sam, and I.
    “Right,” said Jo. “I’ll start.” Jo turned and knelt with The Book in her lap. She opened it and read:
    “Green morning mist
A good day to travel.”
    She handed The Book to me. I thought about our day and saw my verse write itself. I read it out:
    “Red Devils
Red ants
Marching on the Tokaido Road.”
    Freddi read:
    “Wooden sword
hack attack.
Watch out, Great-granddad.”
    Fred read:
    “Hot steaming
Noodles are
Delicious.”
    Samm read:
    “A butterfly flaps its wings
in Brooklyn.
Storm in Edo.”
    Sam looked around the room of samurai, then at Zou. Without even reading, he spoke his verse:
    “Flag moving, wind moving
Time warping
Mind moving.”
    Tokugawa smiled a huge samurai smile.
    The most peaceful swirl of green mist we have ever felt wrapped us up like a baby in its mom’s arms. Time Warp poetry.
    Zou and Honda dipped a slight farewell bow.
    Fred, Sam, and I bowed to Freddi, Samm, and Jo. I had a feeling we probably would see them like Jo said, “some other time.”
    Then we disappeared like Mount Fuji behind the mist.

THIRTEEN
    The green mist drained away. Fred and I were back at Sam’s kitchen table. Sam was back standing in his ready karate pose. The last of the mist slipped into The Book. Sam collapsed into a kitchen chair.
    “Oh table. Oh books. Oh home,” said Sam. He laid his hands on the table to make sure it was real. “It’s so good to be home safe and sound.”
    Fred and I looked at him.
    “Well, mostly sound anyway,” I said.
    “Safe,” said Fred. “Definitely safe.”
    We kept looking at Sam, not quite knowing how to tell him.
    “What?” said Sam. “What are you two staring at? That was a pretty amazing zen samurai verse I came up with, wasn’t it?”
    “Yeah, amazing,” I said.
    “Yeah, a real samurai verse,” said Fred.
    We couldn’t take our eyes off Sam’s head.
    “A real samurai,” I said. “I’ll bet that’s what happened. Your verse was so samurai, that The Book—”
    The downstairs doorbell buzzer buzzed.
    Sam jumped up. “That’s probably my mom. Put The Book away. We’ll tell her we learned all this stuff studying samurai.”
    “Oh yeah,” said Fred.
    I heard Sam’s mom’s footsteps coming up the stairs. Sam went to get the door.
    Time warped and started speeding up.
    There was no other way but to just tell him.
    We couldn’t take our eyes off Sam’s head.
    “Yeah, that’s it,” I said quickly. “We’ll tell her we were studying samurai and got so carried away that you ... uh ... shaved half your head and put the rest of your hair in a ponytail.”

    Sam turned back and looked at Fred and me. He reached up to feel his samurai shave and ponytail.
    “Sam Samurai,” said Fred.
    Time warped and ran out.
    Sam’s mom opened the door.

 
     
Boys,
    You did come up with some interesting research on the origins of haiku. But you didn’t follow the haiku form, and didn’t each give three examples.

    Ms. Basho