Tanka Prose

All Things Browning

God's in His heaven—All's right with the world! [1] 

—Robert Browning

"Would you also like to see the balcony on the third floor?" a library attendant asks me. "We keep the door locked, but I can open it for you. The view is lovely."

For two years as a college student, I lived across the street from this lavish Italian Renaissance-style building. Yet until now, decades later, I'd never actually explored inside these walls, nor outside them either. I'd only attended a ceremony or two—in then out, no time for more. Today, Pippa, the bronze statue surrounded by greenery at the front of the long, manicured lawn, comes to life for me . . . drawing me in.

As I step gently through a network of grand rooms in the Armstrong Browning Library (which is both research center and museum), I have trouble deciding where to fix my gaze. Greeting me first: rich-wood paneling, towering marble columns, ornate ceilings, a polished tile floor with a brass-inlaid border. The tranquil countenance of a young man seated at the front desk. Then book after antique book lining shelf after shelf. A multitude of stained-glass windows, sunlit and vivid, almost all of them illustrating poems by Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Personal furniture. Busts and other sculptures, miscellaneous works of era-appropriate art. And several Browning portraits, with faces that seem to stare pensively at me.

can an artist

capture on canvas

the essence

of a master of words?

this son they called Pen

Many delicate pieces of memorabilia gracefully rest in glass cases. (Not to mention that the library also maintains a vast-and-growing collection of letters and manuscripts.) I realize I could study every trinket and silver spoon, every brooch and snippet of lace, for more time than I have—as well as lose myself in the notes that accompany them. A small traveling tea set, with basket, particularly captures my attention. The story goes that the set belonged to a Mrs. Jean Sherwood, an American art critic, who used it to share tea with a stranger one day while on a train journey in Italy. During their conversation, Mrs. Sherwood remarked that in America Elizabeth Barrett Browning was considered to be the greatest woman poet. The stranger responded, "She was my wife."

this wisp of hair

held tight in the embrace

of a locket . . .

how certain small things

don't harden with age

her inkstand

made of fine porcelain . . .

a chorus

of syllables

spilling onto paper

even leaves

from the laurel wreath

on his casket

saved, arranged in a frame . . .

still a cascade of life

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways [. . .]

I shall but love thee better after death. [2]          

—Elizabeth Barrett Browning 

_______________________

Author's Notes:

[1] From "Pippa's Song," lines 7-8, in Pippa Passes, a dramatic poem/play by Robert Browning (1841).

[2] From "Sonnets from the Portuguese 43," first and last lines, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1850).

Inspiration and information for "All Things Browning" came primarily from an in-person visit to The Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University, Waco, Texas; the library's website and the librarian/curator of books and printed materials also served as resources. The facility, which opened in 1951, "houses the world's largest collection of Browning material and other fine collections of rare 19th-century books, manuscripts, and works of art" (as stated on the website).

The life-size statue of Pippa, presented to the library in 1957, was sculpted by Waldine Tauch.

Sculptor/painter Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning, or "Pen," was the Browning poets' only child. Several portraits he painted of his parents are displayed at the library.

Elizabeth (1806-1861) is buried at the English Cemetery, Florence, Italy, while Robert (1812-1889) is buried in Poets' Corner in London's Westminster Abbey.

On a personal note, the author was surprised to discover, not long ago, an additional Browning "connection." Not only did she live as a student across the street from the Armstrong Browning Library, but she also attended a middle school barely more than steps from London's St. Marylebone Parish Church, where the Brownings married in 1846.

_______________________

—Haibun Today, Vol. 11, No. 1, March 2017

Roses removed

roses removed,

rock garden replaced

with asphalt . . .

who are these people

living in our old house?

—Ribbons, Spring/Summer 2017

Here I am again. I didn't drop off the face of the earth!

P.S. This tanka is about the house we used to live in, in England, when I was 10–15. Walked down the street it's on when we visited last year.

Tanka Prose

No room at the inn

We're among the first to arrive this afternoon at the local drug store, our haven from this storm of storms. Bedecked in our "emergency" ponchos (mine with Mickey Mouse on the back), we tromp in, rain beads sliding off onto the floor. A short while later, a lady bursts in by herself, animated, rattled. She briefly describes, to anyone and everyone, her harrowing experience on a nearby flooded road: "I asked myself, did I want to be one of those people they show on TV who has to be rescued?" She immediately answers her own question, "No!"     

Others trickle in little by little. A soft-spoken woman relays to us how her grown son, who tried to drive into town to pick her up, did have to be saved from the waters, his car lost to them. And a thin man who must be nearly seven feet tall commands attention. "This is the fifth time in the past year, the fifth time, I've been flooded out of my place." I begin to feel as if I'm part of a classic Christie whodunit—disparate guests gathered here, unable to leave, all roads out, both big and small, impassable. 

It's amazing how we manage to whittle away the hours, alternately cruising the aisles, curling up in cold faux-leather chairs in the pharmacy waiting area, and stepping outside to check out the scene: the lights, the clouds, the rescue boats carried on trailers. From time to time, one of the store workers shows us updated radar maps on his smart phone. (We have no smart phone ourselves, and our shared old-style phone has run out of juice.) My husband keeps talking about finding a clean room for the night. That is, until someone new bolts in and announces there are no more rooms to be had in this town—even if we could get to one.

a see-through case

with travel toothbrush

and tube of paste—

life's essentials

for a dollar or two 

While it makes no sense to us, the store shuts down at its usual time, 10 p.m, forcing all of us to move to our vehicles in the near-packed parking lot. Just before then, a line forms in front of the women's restroom. I feel possibly more concerned about having to suddenly relieve myself at 2 or 3 in the morning than I do about threats of tornadoes not so very far away. Even the employees station themselves outside, one of them leaning against the building, guzzling wine from a bottle half concealed in a brown paper bag.

Sometime after midnight, through the window of her large black Cadillac SUV parked next to us, a woman we'd chatted with bids us kind farewell as though we are longtime friends. She has decided to try her luck at leaving, hoping a road or two have reopened since the earlier police warning—but she does live a little closer than we do. Over the course of the night, three more rounds of rain, even a little hail, beat down on us, the last starting at approximately 3:45 a.m. My husband manages to snooze through the heaviest of it; not so me, however.

Come 5:30 or so, the lot is only a third full. (Did others know something we didn't?) I'm oddly glad to still see the white pickup truck two spaces over. A flicker of brightness, I assume from a cigarette lighter, lets me know there's life inside. A short while later, the occupant hops out and disappears round to the back of the building. I believe I know what he's about to do there.

the shelter

of our Kia Soul

this storm-drenched night

with other travelers

we share the restless sky

—Atlas Poetica, Summer 2017

__________________________________

For part one to this story, read "Deluge." 

A stream of warmth

a stream of warmth

from this vent in the floor ...

the people

from all my winters

who still hold onto me

—GUSTS, 24, Fall 2016 

Merry Christmas, Seasons Greetings
from my small corner to yours!

Tanka Prose

The Singer

For years, I couldn't remember its name—that tasteful little nightclub tucked away from the bustle of shopping and restaurants. Intimate. Nothing ostentatious, simple wooden tables. Dark but not too dark. Safe but holding a measure of intrigue. Meant for people like me.

The resident musician sang and played nearly nonstop, curled around his guitar as if he were bound to it. (I rarely ever saw him stand up.) The song selection: whatever was popular back then, mellow but not too mellow. Notes and voice hinting of warm butterscotch.

An unlikely friend of mine with exotic island looks once spoke of him with an air of familiarity. "You know him?" I asked, as if he were a god and I a mere mortal-girl. "Sure," she responded between characteristic long drags on her cigarette. Of course, she and I lived in different lanes.

Fast forward: In time, the name of the place would come to me. Then, after a computer search to learn about its fate, I would stumble across the singer's name; another search would instantly yield current-day photos of him. In mere minutes, I would learn that he had landed himself on a list of registered sex offenders and, also, that he had been deemed a man of God, though I had no way of knowing which label had come first.

among shadows

at the trendy bars

I'd sit hoping

some young man would find me

yet hoping he wouldn't

_____________

The tanka "among shadows" was previously published in Landfall: Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka, 2007.

Tanka Prose

Genus Dianthus

In my hand, a memento I consider purchasing from the little shop at the botanical gardens. "Do you know what flower this is?" I ask. The kindly man at the desk seems eager to help me. "Hmm, it appears to be a pink. Not all pinks are pink, you know; some are red, for instance," he offers. "And are you aware that the name pink comes from pinking shears—the serrated edges similar to the edges of the petals?"  

(Can't say I am. Ever-the-novice gardener, I don't even realize at this moment that I have variously colored clumps of pinks, which I have only ever referred to as Dianthus, in front of my own house.)  

I putter around the shop a little longer. Then the man shows me a page in a thick reference book, enthusiastically pointing to an illustration that bears a resemblance to the petite flower on this souvenir. "Look!" Before I leave, back to my life far away from shaded trails and lush displays of flora, I remind myself that attentiveness like this doesn't exist just anywhere.

painted

by a local artist

a dish so small

it holds nothing

but a memory

—Haibun Today,  Vol. 10, Number 3, September 2016

_______________________

The location: Asheville Botanical Gardens.

Haiga: Ordered

For information about this memorial, please see KYSO Flash, issue 6, Fall 2016.

Announcement: KYSO Flash HTP Contest Results

Recently, I received the surprising news of winning first place in the HTP Contest, a joint haibun and tanka prose competition administered by Clare MacQueen, editor/publisher extraordinaire of the innovative KYSO Flash online journal. To read my piece, "Approximations," as well as the other winning entries plus the semifinalist and publisher's choice entries, follow this link.

For commentaries by Matthew Paul, judge, follow this link.

Many thanks to Clare and Matthew!

Summer sun

summer sun

our minds bare and aligned

we discuss

both the pain of change

and the need for it

—Eucalypt, 19 (fall 2015)

How light; futile to try

how light

can resculpt a face

… if for one day

I could be everyone

I've been loath to like




—Ribbons (runner-up, Tanka Café, "Changing the World"), Fall 2015


Thanks to poet James Chessing for his insightful comments in the Tanka Café feature of the Winter 2016 issue of Ribbons, the Tanka Society of America journal. The above poem is mine. But congratulations to Joyce S. Greene for her winning Café poem, included below with her permission. FYI, for each issue of Ribbons, members are invited to submit tanka on a specific new theme. The winner from the previous issue makes the selections.

futile to try
to change the world
I can't change myself
all my vows to worry less
and chuckle more, forgotten

~Joyce S. Greene
—Ribbons (winner, Tanka Café, "Changing the World"), Fall 2015

Early spring

early spring 

the soft growth of antlers ...

a chill

each time my eyes meet his

on the hunter's trophy

—Skylark (a "Skylark's Nest" runner-up), 3:2, Winter 2015

Tanka Prose

Something in the Air

by Janet Lynn Davis (prose) and Susan Burch (tanka)

I catch myself staring at the cracks in her thickly applied pink lipstick. Then it happens. Something from somewhere lands in one of my eyes, aggravating a contact lens and as per usual triggering a mini-waterfall. 

At the eleventh hour, just as I need to get serious about my required research paper, my Freshman English instructor, via swift strokes with her red pen, presses me to switch to a more-traditional (aka stodgy) topic. That's why I'm now sitting here in her dank little office behind the classroom: to assert myself. 

In a flash, her face freezes as she no doubt notices the waterworks. “Okay. You can go ahead with it,” she sheepishly acquiesces. “I was only afraid things would get too psychological for me.” With that, she officially approves my original topic: Why People Laugh.   

This probably wasn't the first time tears saved me. I run with it.            

I blink my eye 

to get a lash out—

the married guy

sharing the elevator

winks back at me

                

____________________

Authors' Note: For those unfamiliar with U.S. university curriculums, "Freshman English" refers to a first-year English literature and composition course (or courses).

—Haibun Today, vol 9 no. 2, June 2015

Thanks to fellow poet Susan for working on this with me. Was fun to do! By the way, what I write about here (the prose) really did happen.

Clergymen

clergymen 
wearing loud neckties
that once were his— 
he always wanted 
his funeral to be fun 

—Ribbons, Fall 2013

A year this month that he's been gone, a longtime friend's husband, after a several-year battle. 

A wrist band

a wrist band

IDs me with name

and age—

still, all these people

ask me who I am

~hospital, Katy, Texas, USA

—Atlas Poetica 20, January 2015

In a shoe box

in a shoe box

my Shirley Temple doll

made of china ...

the teardrop crack

under one of her eyes

—Ribbons "Tanka Cafe" (theme: heirlooms and relics), Spring/Summer 2014

An aunt of mine was given this doll decades ago. I read via Googling that she (the doll, not my aunt!) was probably made in the year 1934. Fragile Shirley eventually ended up in my hands when I was still a child. Too bad my mother threw the original box away.

Here she is, except mine isn't in quite as good shape. And I learned something: she isn't actually made of china (oops) but, instead, "composition," a painted sawdust/wood blend.

Milestone birthday

milestone birthday—

in a Thinker pose  

on the couch  

he whiles away the time  

with classical music

—The Bamboo Hut, Vol. 1, No. 2, January 2014

Oops: I meant to post this last month, when it was "his" birthday (not that my readers would know that, of course!).

Cruising waters

cruising waters
where the great auk once thrived …
what of me
is prized enough
for the greedy to seize?

—Skylark 2:2, Winter 2014, "Skylark's Nest" clutch of runners-up

Skylark is a wonderful journal of tanka and its related forms, edited by poet extraordinaire Claire Everett and including a liberal sprinkling of artwork by her talented daughter Amy. With this issue, fellow poet-blogger Jenny Ward Angyal officially joins the crew as reviews and features editor. 

Each issue, poets are invited to write a "Skylark's Nest" tanka inspired by a nature-themed drawing. 

I was happy to be able to cruise northeastern waters last spring. My travels included a side excursion to the Bird Islands off Nova Scotia. The great auk no longer exists, thanks to exploitation by humans, but from a distance, through thick cloud cover and drizzle, I managed to see a few of its relatives, i.e., puffins and razorbills. 

Razorbills: Bird Islands, Nova Scotia, Canada

Still haunting me

still haunting me 
from time to time in dreams ...
your jet-black hair 
highlight-streaked to cover
the gray you now must have

—Modern English Tanka 3, Spring 2007

H A P P Y   H A L L O W E E N

At the ER

at the ER

a fleeting connection ...

the screams

of an unseen stranger

echoing mine

—Atlas Poetica, #18, Summer 2014