To the Lighthouse: Mood Haiku and Tanka

Mood haiku and tanka are the sub-genres of mood poetry, a type of poetry with the focus on moods, which are created by the poet for the readers and to evoke certain feelings in them. Mood is sometimes described as the “emotional landscape” of the poem. It is the feelings that the readers gets from reading the poem as a whole.

Selected Mood Haiku:

tiny sips

to make it last

autumn twilight

Bill Kenney

night chill

rearranging the order

of canned soups

Fay Aoyagi

house clearance

room by room by room

my mother disappears

Alan Summers

living alone

telling one cry of a crow

from another

Elmedin Kadric

the news on mute ...

I'm quiet and quieter

as my old dog sleeps

Chen-ou Liu

                                                                 to be continued ...

Selected Mood Tanka:

at dawn

on a mountain pass

in the drifting fog

almost imperceptible

the smell of green tomatoes

Kenji Miyazawa 

into a pair of stars

we will turn—till then

let us never recall

autumn’s voice

we heard in the same bed

Akiko Yosano

dusk gathers

with the alchemy

of ravens . . .

alone, in a clearing

my heart picked clean

Robin Anna Smith

and when 

the sand runs out? 

the stillness 

of the hourglass 

and I are one

Denis M. Garrison

a drizzly day,

with yellow leaves pasted

to wet black pavement --

returning the library books

she left behind

Larry Kimmel

migrant

detention

sunset

ladders

the sky

LeRoy Gorman

a girl

sticks her tongue out

at snowflakes

her mother's smiling face

in the shelter window

Chen-ou Liu

                                                                 to be continued ...