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

I gather

I gather

clumps of aloe vera

for my neighbor—

life spreads hither and yon

from my mother's garden

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

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.

On my knees

on my knees 
in a forest of weeds ... 
through the night 
the chatter of small things 
I rip from my life

—Eucalypt, 20, Spring 2016 (Distinctive Scribblings award)

Many thanks to Jenny Ward Angyal for selecting my tanka but especially for her beautiful, thoughtful appraisal, a work of art in its own right. 

Collaborative tanka sequence: Ash and embers

Many thanks to the magnificent Susan Constable, poet and tanka editor for A Hundred Gourds, for working with me on this collaboration: 

Ash and embers

Janet Lynn Davis &
Susan Constable

grass clippings 
still heavy and slick 
from a downpour— 
the last bits of summer 
clinging to their source 

the biggest bloom 
in the dahlia garden 
fades and curls … 
a friend in palliative care 
turns away from us all 

pale gray walls 
becoming grayer ... 
at ninety         
my grandmother
says she wants to die  

I touch the stove 
warm from ash and embers            
this morning 
the first shoots of daffodils    
poke through melting snow   

—Ribbons, spring/summer 2015  

Note: Susan's tanka are "the biggest bloom" and "I touch the stove."

A jumbled heap

a jumbled heap 

of lantana clippings

left to dry—

line by crooked line

I untangle my words

—cattails, May 2015

Nestled

nestled 

in succulent leaves, 

a sign: 

Don’t water the plant 

It needs a dry spell 

office building, Magnolia, Texas, USA

— Atlas Poetica, 20, January 2015

No dry spells here. It seems the rains just don't want to cease; we're way above average monthly rainfall totals. Our wet-weather creek at the back has probably run over. And to think that for two or three years earlier in this decade we were in "exceptional drought" mode!

Bowing branches

bowing branches

where wildlife feasted—

shameful of me

to long for the berries

that briefly adorned them 

—A Hundred Gourds, 3:2, March 2014

Pictured above: American beautyberry, a native plant that grows like weeds all over our property. This year, the iridescent berries, which I always eagerly anticipate, are still quite thick. However, last year, when the above tanka was written, they didn't last long. Also refer to a former post.

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

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.

Tanka Prose

Fine roots

"No more hurting people

Peace" *

with pebbles

I prop them back up—

my lavender

barely past seedling stage

uprooted by wind

April 15, 2013, mid-afternoon. Staring out the window, I notice that some of them are bowing heavily, a few others passed out. Just a couple of days ago, I had planted them carefully in a neat row down the center of the bed. Now, I must painstakingly tuck them back in.

After I return inside, I learn that a horrific attack has occurred at the Boston Marathon. Much more news would follow: so many serious injuries, a child among the dead. What do parents say to their children, even those not immediately affected? 

________________

* Words on a sign made by Martin Richard, eight years old, one of the three people killed.

—LYNX, February 2014   

"with pebbles" first published at Haiku News, August 2013. 

Wishing you peace.

How to prune a poet

I'm not prolific.
To get more lines from me
you'd have to prune me first—
grab your hand shears,
cut my creaking, errant excess out.

But do it right, at the right times,
never in winter,
during my hibernation.
Trim me with a cultivator's touch,
after lavishing me with water,
nourishing me, tending my petals
as if you were in love.

Don't hack, how brutal.
You could leave wounds
that would never heal.
I could become infected;
then I'd lower my limbs
in a defeated poet's stupor.
And at the most, I'd write of throbs,
an egregious injury
the likes of which you,
grimy gloved, would never feel.

—Megaera, Vol.8, Issue 3, No. 26, Summer 2006

sharing with Poets United 7/14

Planting privet

planting privet
we mix fresh garden soil
with old earth
expectant of buds
and deep rambling roots

—kernels, Premier Edition, Spring 2013

Well, our variegated privet, which I understand may grow like weeds in certain parts of the U.S. and elsewhere in the world (or at least the regular privet apparently does), isn't thriving here quite yet. It didn't help that soon after we planted it, the deer thought it was part of their salad bar—even though it's supposed to be deer-resistant. But the earth and I are still "expectant." 

Left alone

He will miss 
      the seasonal change,
      subtle as it will be:
      the first two waves of chill. 

He will leave
      when humid air still knocks
      against skin like angry beads
      and the jasmine draws in
      its final bees for the year— 

And will be gone
      while the oleander begin
      their hibernating droop
      and the hibiscus expose
      frameworks of thinning bones. 

He will not know
      the needle’s drill into
      tame, unsuspecting flesh,
      or the restive landscape
      of waiting for results— 

But will return
      in time to witness
      the expected conflagration:
      scarlet berries on the yaupon. 

—Loch Raven Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2005

The berries on our city yaupon tree (pictured) would turn bright red during November. Here in this rustic place where we now live, the clump of native yaupon by our driveway already is loaded with red berries.

I hand water

I hand water
a beautyberry— 
differing views
my neighbor and I
on what a weed is

Callicarpa americana (American beautyberry)

Southeastern United States, including pinewoods of east Texas
—"From Lime Trees to Eucalypts: A Botany of Tanka," an Atlas Poetica special feature, August 2011

Now that so much vegetation has been cleared from our lot, including a number of tall, struggling pines, the resultant brightness has enabled the beautyberry plants to thrive. Though they're close to invasive around here and in dry spells can look pretty scraggly, I've chosen to keep many of them. First, in early summer, the delicate flowers are unveiled, then before summer's end, there are those berries that resemble no other berries I've ever seen. 

Note: I very much enjoy reading the Atlas Poetica special features, where 25 poems on a given theme are selected. I'm especially looking forward to the next feature, on ekphrastic tanka, which should be published sometime this fall.

On bare ground

A poem that surfaced and survived as I tried to inch away from my writing drought:

on bare ground 
I sprinkle small seeds
with abandon
as if growing wildflowers
requires a lack of care

—Notes from the Gean, June 2011; Take Five (vol. 4), 2012

The many wildflower seeds I enthusiastically bought and sprinkled around didn't amount to much. Perhaps that's not surprising in this, what I sometimes call, godforsaken place where "nothing" will grow alongside the towering lobollies save hardy native vegetation such as yaupon and monster wild grape vines. Of course, the extensive droughts, ongoing temperature extremes, and certain other factors didn't help. 

But every now and then, when you're not really looking, a few seeds will work their magic: for me, a couple of years later, a single clump of Texas bluebonnets, the lemon-yellow blooms on Missouri primrose. . .