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

Lost on a day

lost on a day

as gray as the road … 

mapless

I follow my instincts

to find the way home

—GUSTS, #23, spring/summer 2016

Off the freeway; my father

off the freeway
in an open field
a vast church
its cross shaped in a curve
as if to hold the world

—kernels, 2013

my father

who rarely ever hugs

halfway does ...

bells begin to ring

this Christmas season

—Frameless Sky, December 2014

Frameless Sky is a new, innovative DVD journal from the creative Christine L. Villa.

Long cracks; the way lines

long cracks
in the asphalt road
near our house—
each morning I walk
my own damaged trail

the way lines
seemed to form overnight
around my mouth
... as if I had smiled
one time too many

—both individual tanka: kernels ("featured poet"), Summer 2013 
Note: The online journal kernels has morphed into cattails, but the archives are available.

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

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.

Off the highway

off the highway
Old Potato Road
etched through the pines
like some kind of secret
no one ever told me

—Eucalypt, Issue 12, May 2012

When we first came across that road, on the drive to Round Rock, the inevitable question arose: "Where's New Potato Road?" We've looked and, not too surprisingly, have never found it.

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.