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Posts Tagged ‘tanka’

are you sharing it
with me, this
loneliness?

*

how do they do it,
those birds, keeping a course
through the gale
when even in this still, still room
I can hardly take one step

*

alone is more
alone than
I thought

*

as I fall
I feel how this, too,
is dancing

*

that small voice,
quiet as petals, says
why not be the one
who tears down any wall
that stands between two hearts

*

falling, falling,
I don’t know when I stopped
wanting to be caught

*

new snow in the field
the only tracks there
one woman dancing

*

they sure do mess up
the sheets—excitement
and grief

*

who is the one
that falls and who is the one
who notices her falling

*

midnight.
the power out, I make
of myself a light

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perhaps to prove
she can change the world
my daughter stomps
on the icicle right when
my camera clicks

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one of those days tanka

forgive me
for not hearing today
beneath the wailing
the boy who just wants
so desperately to be heard

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young girls in pink
tutus—it’s hard to believe
we’re all dying

*

anti-aging conference?
we argue and research
how to stay young,
meanwhile, on our shelves
drums and flutes gather dust

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such a short time
I’ve been gone, but now how high
the drifts of snow where
once we danced a path between
my house and yours

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Today I learned what
I knew: if a cell from my
heart met one from yours,
they would find a new rhythm
not yours, not mine, but ours.

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inside that sigh
migrate a thousand thousand
butterflies

*

what’s quiet
is still quiet behind
the barking dog

*

I fall asleep
aware of part of me watching
the one who sleeps

*

these arms
not reaching
but waving

*

poor woman
stopping long enough to smell
the juniper berries
only because
she has to pee

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rereading the book
of my days,
every page
I’ve dog eared
as one worth living

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despite snow
despite cold
though it makes no sense
this heart
still unbuttons its coat

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On second thought,
the tower is nice.
Quiet.
You can keep
the braid.

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endlessly tanka

it is the shape of a woman,
this door, which
no matter how many times
it opens
opens again

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and then melt tanka

as snowflakes
become one snow
let us know
each other—wholes
joined in a vaster whole

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this clear night
no shooting stars
this heart
thrilled
anyway

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my daughter
and I, two small points
beneath a sky
of infinite small
bright points

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Tanka after Reading Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, “Prayer”


All the places her armor cracked
are left unmended.
Brighter now, she recalls
how she used to impugn the sun
when she could not feel the light.

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the sun will go down anyway
will go down soon
regardless, I move
across the street
one last stroke of warmth

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Be still.
—Lama Surya Das

It would be easier
to walk ten hundred miles
through swamps
than to do what you ask of me:
nothing.

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Love is Like That Tanka

all night
the train hurls
itself forward
inside, I don’t even
hang on

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Vast though it is tanka

our fire may be small
but even
a small flame
holds back
the night

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go ahead tanka

draw a line
in the sand
with your toe—
just see if the ocean
cares.

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