Tanka for autumn

apple picking

each year with children

now just we two

I gather the fruit

as I gathered memories

the brilliance of fall

coupled with shorter days

gives me pause

this certainty I accept,

yet I long to dally

a new month

the advance of autumn

proceedes quickly

morning frost on bare trees

and sweaters out of mothballs

Lyrical Passion Poetry, 11/2017

Tanka Anthology, 2015

Presence, winter 2015

Haiga

Haigaonline

Haibun

Heritage  Familiar songs from a land not mine, yet linked by genes. Stories told. A time imagined.  But for chance, I would have been a peasant like she was, living in scraggy hills, milking a goat, running over rocks in bare feet, so calloused they never bleed. There would be hungry days and starry nights with the wind for a companion. There would be fear and want and fleeting dreams waiting for my father to return.  After the letter arrives there would be a bumpy ride in a patched-up cart to the train.  With many a look back I would watch the dry, dusty land change into a crowded town with the smell of the sea where a ship waits in the harbor, belching smoke from its black stacks.  I would travel in the stink of the ship’s lowest depths with days of anxiety, heat and cold, hunger and sleepless nights, to reach another shore where life would begin again.  a soft spring day the family comes together for a funeral  Contemporary Haibun Online

Haiga for Halloween

                                               

Daily Haiga

Haiku for Autumn

old tree stump

the same woodpecker

whittling it down

tree gazing

the brightest shades of red

on poison ivy

non-stop rain

puddles connected

into a pond

Moonset

Gean

World Haiku Review

Haibun

In the Eye of the Beholder    

Bath time for my two year old daughter. Soapy and slippery. Giggling, she splashes water on me. I’m in an old robe, no makeup, my hair in curlers.  As I towel her dry, she puts her arms around me and says, “Mommy, you’re beautiful.”

weeds and more weeds–

aging in a crock

dandelion wine

World Haiku Review

Haibun

                                                                           MEDITATION      

Grandpa's grape arbor. A shaded retreat for reading, for playing with my dolls or jacks, for a game of checkers with my sister, for helping Grandma shuck peas or for just sitting and doing nothing. I don't remember thinking anything when sitting under the arbor or lying on the grass watching clouds or bugs. Just doing nothing was the activity. 

                                                                          sitting za-zen

                                                                          the position I take

                                                                          is lying down

Failed Haiku Sept.2019 

Haiku Sequence

ARRIVAL IN GENEVA

gray dawn

the gray smell of coal smoke

against gray buildings;

a stranger in a foreign city–

will it ever be home?

exploring the streets

the quick French of the natives

carried in the wind;

tentatively I ask

for directions

cold wind down my neck–

my string bag bulges

with groceries;

at the end of the first day

a lighter step to my walk

Modern English Tanka