Still catching up. I am writing the other poems too, may at some point post them here.

The prompt for Day 11 was to write a tanka using the 5-7-5-7-7 format. A friend of mine is president of the local Haiku group. I’m told that good North American Haiku is not 5-7-5 because the Japanese form does not use syllables. So the English form of syllable is not an accurate measure. This of course confuses me. And then there is the famous “turn” in the haiku, which I can never get right. And the form called senryu by the Japanese has somehow changed for the English version, so that human references are okay in English haiku. This means that I don’t write Japanese forms because I can’t quite get it right.

Nevertheless here is a short poem that somewhat adheres to the prompt at least!

TATTOO TANKA-esque poem

Along the main street
the town is closing up shop
boarded up windows
a new store boasts neon flash
Discount! TATTOOS WHILE YOU WAIT!

Day 13 was to take an observational walk and write a calm poem. I tried!

Early Spring Landscape

Remnants of snow leach back into
the ground, brown with flattened grass,
green still sleeping off the winter weight.
Early flowers poke above the soil, tentative
and shy, face to leaf with soggy mash
of old news, expired flyers. Nothing beautiful
yet, no faint tinge of spring on trees,
no budding bushes, air still damp and chill.
But the front lawn boasts its first robins,
and the population around feeders suddenly
triples with common redpolls stopping by
on their way even further north than here.

English: Common redpoll (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Carol A. Stephen
April 16, 2013