My Dear Readers and Friends:
Today is Father’s Day. To celebrate, I’m sharing a curated selection of haiku and tanka. These poems capture the changing faces of fatherhood and challenge us to rethink the impact of fathers in our world.
her tiny voice --
the apartment fills
with dad-dads
John Hawk
a toddler climbs
onto father's shoulders
to reach the kite
Goda V. Bendoraitiene
the foster girl
colors me into her life
Father's Day card
Chen-ou Liu
father's newspaper
a constant refuge
from conversation
Mike Gallagher
all that remains --
dad's Chevy leaving
a trail in the dust
Marion Alice Poirier
shooting star --
father’s ring
slips off my finger
H. Gene Murtha
I’ve this memory --
riding my father’s shoulders
into the ocean,
the poetry of things
before I could speak
Michael McClintock
fifty years on ...
dad's old guitar and me
get in tune at last
Natalia Kuznetsova
withering
the sunflowers still
in offering
at my father’s tomb --
it’s shorter than I
Kaleidoscope, 2007
Shuji Terayama
To conclude today's Special Feature post, I would like to share with you the following tanka written for my late father:
alone again
on this winding road home
in slanted moonlight
I try to imagine my place
in the world without Father
FYI: This is a sequel to my tanka below:
Father's breath
fades into forever ...
I gaze out
his hospice window
at the moon, its fullness
Haiku Page, 11, 2025
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