“A Few Tanka”

(Water color with gold leaf:  “Hummers”, Jane Kohut-Bartels)

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Mist drifts in waves
Ribbon-ing maple branches
The rising of moon
Make Egrets shimmer silver-
Gauzy ghosts of nothingness.

–

Cranes wheeled in the sky
Their chiding cries fell to hard earth
Warm mid winter day
A pale half moon calls the birds
To stroke her face with soft wings.

–

How could I forget
The beauty of the pale moon!
A face of sorrow
Growing thin upon the tide,

disappearing into dawn.

–

Autumn wind startles–
Lowered to an ominous
Key—Ah! Mournful sounds!
The fat mountain deer listen-
Add their bellowing sorrow.

–

I wander the fields
Snow covers the barren soil
Sharp wind plays pan pipes
A murder of crows huddle
Black laughing fruit hang from limbs
–

–

Jane Kohut- Bartels

Copyrighted, 2018

 

Tags: Japaneses poetry form, Painting of Hummingbirds Jane Kohut-Bartels, tanka