The simplest thing

Posted on July 9, 2021 by Mary Kendall

Three poems (two haiku and one tanka) were published in the winter issue of Kokako, 2021. I have a real fondness for this journal because I love all things Kiwi. New Zealand is a beautiful country with such great people. They have a very active poetry community, and Kokako is a beautiful journal to be part of.

snow drifts ~
the wild wind’s
last brief fling

woodland colours
now grow pale
winter light

arranging zinnias
in an old milk jug,
this pandemic silence
urges me to notice
the simplest things

Passing cloud … (tanka)

Posted on July 9, 2021 by Mary Kendall

Tanka Café @ Ribbons
Winter 2021: Volume 17, Number 1

it isn’t a matter
of distance for me –
I learned by age five
how to slip deep inside
that passing cloud

Tanka poets are always proud to have something published in Ribbons, the journal of the Tanka Society America. It is one of the finest journals out there and it’s devoted to tanka and tanka-related work. Besides the main part of Ribbons, each issue has the Tanka Café, edited by Michael McLintock. Michael is an outstanding poet and was the editor of Ribbons for a long time. For many years he has focused on the Tanka Café, a favorite place for many of us. He puts out a prompt for each issue and poets write to that prompt. He gives us great leeway in how we interpret the prompt. This issue had the theme: Escapes. A great prompt indeed! The poems selected were wonderfully varied and always great to read. I interpreted the theme in my own way of course. It has to do with imagination and how early we can learn to escape to it when we need to get away from things in our real life. My thanks to Michael McLintock for selecting this tanka.