Tanka Prose

Deluge

veins of lightning

flash their warning

to the earth …

the silent rivers  

that daily course through me

Despite the rain, we have all the hope of safely arriving home this spring afternoon. But then the heavens open wide. Sky soon blends into road, which blends into flash-floodwater. A massive wash of gray, a lengthy line of traffic.  

We make the decision to turn around in our tiny vehicle at the last-possible opportunity to do so—just before the tall pickup truck ahead of us goes barreling through, water up to its taillights. It appears that a second pickup, from the other direction, could be floating. (We later realize this is where the highway dips and that the stream has risen well above the small bridge.) But halfway into the turn, momentary panic engulfs me: could the way back now be as treacherous as the way we were headed?    

—FM 1774, Waller County, Texas, USA

—Atlas Poetica, Spring 2017

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This event took place last May, about two weeks after my mother's passing and two weeks after the first set of spring rains, which caused much flooding in Houston and the surrounding areas. What a shocker: we heard that a foot of rain fell that afternoon in just one hour. This story is part one. The second part, "No room at the inn," will be posted in a few weeks, once it's been published.

Columns of smoke

columns of smoke

rising from a distant field    

……..the signals

I fail to decipher

on the clearest of days

—Frameless Sky, issue 3

And for those who celebrate this holiday in the U.S.:
H A P P Y  T H A N K S G I V I N G !

The same sky

the same sky 
as in the city 
but vaster here 
above this pastureland, 
my thoughts given their space 

–3LIGHTS, Winter 2010

Building a fence

building a fence

out here in the country

still this need

to neatly section off

the empty spaces

—kernels, July 2013

Too stunning

too stunning
for a simple pasture
the horns
of these longhorn cattle
curve up into the sky

—kernels, Spring 2013 (premier issue) 

at a nearby ranch

Fine creatures, especially up close. I hate to reflect upon their fate.

Driving through; swirls of fog

driving through

this basket of fog

wondering

if I'll be the same

when it clears 

—red lights, June 2006

swirls of fog

along these country roads

by evening

we turn into strangers

beneath our own moon

—Atlas Poetica, #13, Autumn 2012

My grandfather; his early years

my grandfather,
grower of Christmas trees
rows of them
.....before that, children
.....rows of them

      his early years
      on the Kansas prairie,
      memorable 
      and hard . . . like the squares
      of his homemade fudge

—Landfall: Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka, 2007

Radio tuned; the heartbreak

radio tuned
to Texas country,
its lonesome cowboys—
my nondescript accent
briefly switches to twang

—red lights, June 2012

the heartache
in those country tunes—
whole cornfields died
before my own heart
would grow back again

—red lights, June 2012

Jumpin' in: from the freeway

from the freeway
linking farmland to city
no scenic views,
just a few mountains
painted on an RV 

—American Tanka, #20, January 2012

How many times we've traveled that route between city and country and back again, especially during the stressful, years-long transition from Houston to the secluded rustic community where we now live. Above: my first tanka published in 2012, after I'd emerged from a writing hiatus. Well, during my break—lasting a couple of years or so—I suppose I produced a handful or two of poems, but many of them were flimsy or clunky. Since then, it's taken a while to find my way back. Maybe someday I'll see mountains, though, granted, not in this part of the world—at most, some gently rolling hills here and there.