TANKA WHILE WALKING, November 2008
Like the lithe bowing
Of a red maple sapling
My heart turns to you,
Yearns for those nights long ago
When pale skin challenged the moon.
Come into my arms.
Bury under the warm quilt.
Your scent makes me drunk
Like the wine we gulped last night.
Too much lust and drink to think.
So much bitterness
Between two who lusted deeply.
What happened to love?
One word could change night to day.
One word could unbind my soul!
I walked a landscape
Unfamiliar to my mind.
The only sound heard
Was the tinkling of bells
Then silence covered like snow.
I look up at blue
Sky this morning, watch leaves fall-
Whirling, colored tears.
Clip my face like dull razors,
The strokings of memory.
Is the whistling
Of the wind- a train, a plane?
Nature plays fiddle
And our senses are confused,
We dwell in chicanery!
Overhead, the cranes,
Sandhills, swirl in board circles.
Broken GPS?
No matter, their cries fall down
Celestial chiding rain.
Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2008
Tags: Japanese Poetry forms, love and lust, tanka, yearning
Lady Nyo's Weblog 
November 21, 2008 at 3:16 am
This is so beautiful! And kind of brings me back 11 1/2 years, to accepting the end of something that was never what I hoped it would ever be – knowing I made the right decision, but always wondering if a different decision would have brought a different result. Sorry for being crytpic, but it’s really very personal. I just wanted you to know how this has touched me and I thank you!
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November 21, 2008 at 3:58 am
I know, Margie…but there was no other outcome, and we both know it.
We can hope, but things were seriously out of your and any one else’s hands.
Bless you!
With love, Be Well.
Jane
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