Category Archives: Poems of Childhood

Scent of beeswax

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I am still catching up with published poetry. Blithe Spirit is the publication of the British Haiku Society. They selected two haiku and two tanka of mine to publish in the winter issue.

Blithe Spirit Fall/Winter Issue 2022

 

1.

brevity
the ripeness
of a pear

 2.

children
fragile as blossoms
learning to let go

3.

fragrant spices, each
with a story to tell,
a bit of this, dash of that
     my pen moves as if
propelled by a stranger
 

4.

scent of beeswax
melting as we draw
invisible designs
on our pysanky eggs—
forgotten childhood

 

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Passing cloud … (tanka)

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Passing cloud … (tanka)

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

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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. 

Bitter wind

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I am delighted to have one tanka and two haiku in the latest issue of Presence:

 

Presence, Issue 67, July 2020

 

 

bitter wind
the maple’s heart
still frozen

 

~

 

once so innocent
we had to make up sins
. . . first confession

 

 

~

 

I tried to bury
those memories
for so long…
the raw scent
of freshly plowed earth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Little frog faces (tanka/kyoka)

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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.