Tanka Sequence

Shared paths

 

dusty tracks

crisscross the asphalt ...

what creatures

walk these paths at night

where I walk by day

 

a robin

by this woodland trail ...

nestled in grasses

then gone in a flash

before my camera click

 

yellow jackets

swarm on the same blooms

I want to touch—

if we ignore each other

can we really coexist

 

bones, teeth, tusks

of Columbian mammoths

excavated

from this very ground

beneath my human feet

 

    —the Waco [Texas] Mammoth National Monument

—Earth: Our Common Ground (anthology, Skylark Publishing), 2017

A stepping stone

a stepping stone

etched with a dragonfly

and welcome ...

…..the earth, the heavens,
……….me somewhere in between

—Skylark, 3:2, Winter 2015

I believe I must have one foot firmly on the ground and the other somewhere in the clouds. 

An anthill

an anthill

covers a stepping stone—

I leave it,

as if all roadblocks

in time resolve themselves

—A Hundred Gourds, 4:4, September 15, 2015

An impaired hill under the holly

Reading down

—GUSTS, Fall/Winter 2015

One sultry day

one sultry day
sinks into the next ...
a mud dauber
intent on mating
with its reflection

—A Hundred Gourds, 3:4, September 2014

Silence; by my knee

silence

follows me around

at my heels

in midday sun

a field of white stars

—Moonbathing, 12, June 2015

by my knee

a soft thud and rustle—

I pause

to take another look

at an ugly brown bug

—Skylark, 3:1, Summer 2015

A trail of dots

a trail of dots

around each ankle

and wrist—

how easily bites

can turn into scars

—Mariposa, 32, Spring/Summer 2015

A widow; a small moth

a widow
traveling alone
her stories
intricate as the design
on her needlepoint purse

—Moonbathing, Nov. 2014

a small moth

           hovering 

above our dashboard—

three of us together

miles away from home

—Presence, #49, Feb. 2014

May your travels through 2015 be bright and fulfilling!

P.S. A friend and I were privileged to meet the "widow" at afternoon tea while on a cruise ship voyage.

Drawn to sweetness

They live in our house,
fleck-sized species of their family.
Have marched miles, as if
from San Antonio to Houston,
in dampness and crushing heat.
Through minute cracks,
they welcome themselves inside,
scale guts of walls until,
for them, nirvana.

Their barracks behind kitchen tile
and bathroom mirror,
they lap up microspecks
of apple juice and minty mouthwash.

I am a poor host,
half-heartedly remorseful.
To think, all that distance—
and then when rations are found,
wiped clean away with a corner
of moistened paper towel.

I console myself with knowing
each troop will soon enough
be replaced by another.

—Ash Canyon Review, Summer 2005, vol. 1, no. 1

A house spider

a house spider

jaunts across the tile—

the crannies

yet to be explored

within these walls

—A Hundred Gourds, 2:4, September 2013

My next home and other house tanka

Below, several poems from the first half of my tanka career, most of them written and published at different times. Grouped together, I believe they almost form a sequence. Of course, in a deliberately written sequence, I hope I wouldn't have two brand-news and five houses or homes. ;) (And of course, years after the fact, I see an edit or two I perhaps should have made.)

my next home,

built among lean pines ...
thinner
and thinner the desire
to make a name for myself

squinting,
I imagine it ...
our rustic home
sprouting up

through winter ryegrass

our brand-new
home site and, already,
some visitors ...
in the sandy loam
fresh tracks of deer

half the rooms

accidentally
painted yellow—

a sin that I can't take

this much cheerfulness?

the time we spend

choosing our new front door
as if nothing else
much matters
but entrances and exits

up high
inside the porches
of our new home
wasps and daddy longlegs
all settled in before us

brand-new house
and yet another leak—
the puddles
I've been sloshing through
on my way to contentment

—"my next home," Tanka Splendor Awards 2007; "squinting," Landfall: Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka (anthology), 2007; "our brand-new," Nisqually Delta Review, Winter/Spring 2007; "half the rooms," Simply Haiku, Winter 2009; "the time we spend," Ribbons, Fall 2008, and Take Five (anthology), Vol. 1, 2009; A Pebbled Shore (TSA 2009 members' anthology); "brand-new house," Simply Haiku, Winter 2009.

Wouldn't you know it, but after all that effort in choosing a door (long story), the builder gave us the wrong size door, with no apologies.

Roadside daisies; golden wings

roadside daisies
vibrant in my hand—
at home
this vase unable
to contain their wildness

golden wings
of a butterfly . . . 
it flees
after grazing
the edge of my shadow

—A Hundred Gourds, 1:4, Sept. 2012

They're not nearly as prolific as they were this summer, and the blooms are smaller. But it's early October, and still there are wild daisies at the edge of the woods.

I step right through

I step right through
a mad swarm of love bugs,
until now
unsure of my status
as a superhero

—Simply Haiku, Winter 2009

And there were masses of them, in the thousands, that summer during construction. Inside, they mostly were dead—heaped throughout the future living and dining rooms, in the AC floor registers, filling (and nearly discoloring) the brand-new tub. But outside they swarmed for weeks. It wasn't long before I stopped bothering to shield myself from them as I walked up the steps, bare-armed and bare-legged, to the side entrance of the house.

I had no idea then that those little bugs were harbingers of things to come over the next three or so years.