Category Tanka

city streetlight full to overflowing with cockatoos preening themselves in the midday heat

wild dogs roam city streets violence simmering within these tame walls Chiang Mai, Thailand city workers too busy to notice honey bees nose-deep in lavender gathering sweetness morning breeze sweeps butterflies this way and that orange snowflakes in summer

see again that ethereal island resting on mist pillows – fields of vibrant gilded greens form a worthy throne

Poet’s House a tanka string coming home to this empty house and full garden a blaze of tulips a tangle of weeds picturesque poetic image… a leaking roof… omg it’s raining in our bedroom now shattered vase… flowers all over…

Lake Barrine a tanka string rainforest walk around the crater lake endless drizzle puddles on the track blurs our view tree ferns between dangling vines cast shadows… time rolls backwards among echoing birdcalls we peer into clear water watch a…

cottage tumbling stone unrooved and unanswered skipped by lowing wind – vagrant souls evicted from shelter their bodies earned

Keitha Keyes lives in a tiny house in Sydney, filled with her husband’s model ships and her many antique irons and trivets. She enjoys writing haiku, senryu, gembun, tanka, kyoka, cherita, sequences and tanka prose. Her work is published in…

a tawny frogmouth on the no standing sign in this dead-end street unable to sleep I search for stars red dust kicked up by long legs chasing short ones the horizon wide… all my sister’s idea to pat that emu…

two thousand yearsborne on the broken columnsof Ephesus –my feet at the grand theatrein the footsteps of St Paul Ephesus Archaeological Site, Turkey in the cornerof the white-walled rooma sad ficus…bright slices of outsideplay across the slow clock Specialist’s waiting…

Tidal Enigma a tanka string hour after hour breakers rise and surge ever forward tumbling out of the blue a brilliant white foam invariably on channel markers and mooring posts a seagull, a pelican claim the latest news swaying palms…