We read to know we're not alone. William Nicholson
The proper response to a poem is another poem. Phyllis Webb
My Dear Contributors and Readers:
The daily practice of crafting tanka is akin to writing lyrics. It connects me more closely to the natural world, and to myself.
-- Debbie Strange
The following tanka is chosen as the best tanka of the year
migrating geese
writing cursive letters
across the sky
I finally read between
the white of your lies
Debbie Strange
Three tanka of Debbie's own choice are featured in the anthology.
Please post this good news to all appropriate venues. Your time and help would be greatly appreciated. And many thanks for your continued support of my project.
Happy Reading
Chen-ou
Selected Tanka
you were lost
to the night as quick
as this moth
when midsummer haze
stole her compass moon
an'ya
sensing
his loneliness
I hide my loneliness
in the tea cup
this cold afternoon
Kozue Uzawa
no wine no moon
still
I make my song
from this pool of lamplight
and the void around me
Larry Kimmel
another city
another market
so mundane
so commonplace ...
’til the bombs fall
Marilyn Humbert
before i knew
a thing about war, or
of a bee's sting
i longed to be held
between your breasts
H. Gene Murtha
humming something
strange to me
my mother is somewhere else
the steady fall
of hibiscus blooms
LeRoy Gorman
the doctor tells us
of the baby's heart murmur --
outside the hospital window
snow half way
down the distant mountain
Michael Dylan Welch
lost
in the sharpening
of my words,
I need a strong blade
for this broken pencil
Sanford Goldstein
you speak of grief
as if it were punishment
a curse, a blight
I sing it as a lullaby
for the child I never held
Sonam Chhoki
this war ...
what colour
are the shadows
of guns
or the tears of a widow?
Keitha Keyes
hush at the pond
where you spent many days
angling
your loneliness is still there
among the weeping willows
Djurdja Vukelic Rozic
Milky Way swirling
in martini glasses
with each sip
we swallow
star after star
Pamela A. Babusci
when the sun sinks low
refugees' shadows conglobulate
over the wired border ...
a tender lullaby
softens the wind
Lavana Kray
linden blossoms
softly falling between
our silences --
we are but two strangers
sitting on the same bench
Steliana Cristina Voicu
at day’s end
cows and their shadows
drift in the fields . . .
grazing on grass
tinged with gold
Simon Hanson
out of the flames
still tasting the ash
a Phoenix ...
how quickly the old life crumbles
scattered by wind and time
Rebecca Drouilhet
the calligraphy
of winter branches
under blue sky
everything he needs to say
in the touch of his hands
Susan Constable
his first move
in forty-four years
furniture
bound like mummies
in swathes of plastic wrap
Janet Lynn Davis
We talk about
which one of us will stay
who will go
the stone in my heart
when did it become my heart
Sylvia Forges-Ryan
the stillness inside
the stillness of snow
falling on snow
nothing left to try
but the letting go
James Chessing
the wind spins
leaves on the birch
faces
of sorrow
faces of light
Mark Gordon
observe the butterfly
under glass
a garden
eternal
in its silence
ai li
this beach
charges me nothing
to walk among
the sea rack and
shards of memory
M. Kei
a world
beyond thought
the river flows
into light
like a swan
A A Marcoff
the disease
spreading inside my friend
like a white fern
made of frost
on the window glass
Patricia Prime
endless rain ...
at the sudden news
of your death
I remember the dove
in your last painting
Marion Clarke
