collaboration, poem, poetry

Tankas to Nature

Tankas to Nature*

A collaboration with Carol from WritersDream9.Wordpress.com

Carol is a skilled poet who excels at crafting haikus, haibuns and tankas that read like a Japanese master penned them. She also creates short fiction, longer poems and haigas of breath-stealing beauty. Stop by her site and let her words sweep you away to simpler life full of nature’s and the spirit’s bountiful gifts.

It is warm outside
Birds take off their feathered coats
Seeds are bursting now
Shoots thrust through the melting ground
Welcome spring with green carpets

~ ~ ~

Daffodils trumpet
Yellow heads tip back to sing
Expose their nectar
The Oriole is happy
Sings his favorite morning song

~ ~ ~

The chorus of Wrens
Awakens me each morning
As they leave their nests
Returning with wriggling worms
They’ve got hungry mouths to feed

~ ~ ~

Dawn spreads cold fingers
Midday shelters fields with warmth
Farmer wipes his brow
The wheat dances in the breeze
It entertains the loud Crows

~ <3 ~

It was a true pleasure working with Carol on these tankas. Thank you for teaching me about how to craft a tanka. For those unfamiliar with the form, a tanka is a classical Japanese poem consisting of 31 syllables: 5, 7, 5, 7, 7.

~ <3 ~

47 thoughts on “Tankas to Nature”

  1. these beautiful tankas are a delight to read! They dazzled almost all me senses. You two are indeed great poetess, queen of words. <3

    1. Thank you! I think we’re tackling sonnets next 🙂 Oh dear, I think Shakespeare just turned over in his grave and moaned. 😉 I have the feeling he’ll be one of the five people I meet in heaven so he can give me a piece of his mind! lol!

    3. I hope so and Tolkien too. I would very much like to know how he created languages for his races. I tried that back in middle school when I was learning foreign languages (before I ever read any Tolkien). I can learn languages with ease but not invent them. I tried reading about linguistics but I couldn’t understand it. It requires a frame of mind too alien for me to put on.

  4. Beautifully crafted, so fresh and alive. Just the thing for a grey morning. Cleverly titled too- that gave me a smile. Loved reading these, Melinda 🙂

    6. I don’t know what it is. A block or a lack of true understanding but if I could actually get in and have someone tell me what works or doesn’t I feel that would help!

    7. Well let’s tackle that together. I can’t always get the iambic pentameter perfect so I concentrate on just having ten syllables per line and the abab cdcd efef gg rhyme scheme. That one I find is easier to work with.

    8. That is probably my problem. It’s like I am the poetic equivalent of tone deaf. I can count syllables but I don’t hear the stressed and non-stressed! Ugh. Sure you want to take this on? 🙂

    9. I can’t bear the stressed or unstressed either. I just count syllables and stick to the rhyme scheme. I don’t understand the stressed vs unstressed syllables even though I took a poetry course in college and wrote a sonnet for it. And yes I’ll take it on. Maybe I’ll finally learn the difference and hear it!

    11. sure, why not start it today? I’ll be in front of my pc all day today except for about 3 hours in the afternoon when I need to run errands/go for a walk. Otherwise I’ll be on here or google docs. 🙂

  9. Love these tankas that I had read over email. For now I am catching up through email with most of my followed blogs and then just going around pressing like or putting in a comment 🙂

    1. Oh ok, no worries 🙂 I am glad to hear that someone’s reading the emails. I always wondered if they went out into the void or if someone’s reading them 🙂 Thanks for letting me know and thank you for your comment 🙂 You’re always welcome here. There’s no pressure or time limit 🙂

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