Your green tail

your green tail

thin as this brown limb—

o chameleon

in a parched world

why the half-hearted disguise?

—Skylark, 1:2, Winter 2013

Flip-flops

flip-flops
slap the ground harder
after class—
just seven, but who else
had ever flunked "swimming"?

—Simply Haiku, Spring 2008, vol 6 no 1

Those swimming lessons, at the public pool down the street, were the first I ever had. I was doing okay, I thought, until I made it to one of the intermediate levels, taught by a "mean" sixteen-year-old who liked to yell. At least, that's my excuse.

That pool is still there.

Should've caught it

should’ve caught it
in his signature
the large “S”
with all those curlicues
elaborate as his lies

—"Angry Tanka," Atlas Poetica Special Feature, 2014 (edited by Susan Burch)

This one came flying out of me about three years ago. 
And you should know who you are. ;)

15th annual TSA contest winners

Congratulations to the recent winners of the Tanka Society of America International Tanka Contest! Fellow poet-blogger Jenny Ward Angyal won second place. We had a huge response from around the world: more than 500 tanka were entered. So, as coordinator, I've been quite busy. To read all the wonderful winning poems, see the TSA website.

Summer days

summer days
spent cross-legged 
in clover …
my life-long search
for the lucky fourth leaf

—Ribbons, Spring/Summer 2014

She asks me the name

she asks me the name 

of her flowering shrubs,

my mother

who in greener days

was a garden wizard

—The Bamboo Hut, Jan. 2014
P.S. Am speaking of rose of sharon.

Of all things

of all things,

envious of a greenhouse:

transparent

clear through to its guts,

that gleam of sun on its back 

—Atlas Poetica, #17, Spring 2014