Little frog faces (tanka/kyoka)

Posted on September 5, 2020 by Mary Kendall

One of two tanka appearing Eucalypt: A Tanka Journal, Issue 28, 2020

in the attic I find
your small Wellies
with little frog faces—
oh, those happy puddles
when you were only three

Note: We lived near Hampstead Heath in NW London for a full academic year, 1989-90, with our (then) three year old son, Adam. Oh, how he loved rain puddles and stomping in them in his little green Wellies. Getting exercise each day was never a problem with a child who loved the outdoors no matter what the weather. This poem is for him.

Half-light (a tanka sequence)

Posted on August 25, 2020 by Mary Kendall

Milkweed by James DeMers (pixabay.com)

These tanka were written during the quarantine of Covid-19. My thanks to editor/poet, Marilyn Hazelton, for persuading me to combine some tanka into a tanka sequence. A really good editor is priceless. It’s always an honor to have poems included in Redlights. Click on the link below if you care to hear me read it.

Half-light

August morning
just before the katydids
begin to sing . . .
the lake finally calm
with no ripples

milkweed seeds
scatter straight from
the cottony pod ~
such freedom to go
anywhere, everywhere

a spoon slowly stirs
cream into coffee
those quiet moments
when we lose
all sense of now

arm in arm
we walk together –
forty years & more miles
than either of us
can count

half-light—
walking in fog
where nothing is seen
but somehow we trust
it’s still all there

Red Lights, Summer Issue 2020