Tanka

Photo by Milada Vigerova on Unsplash.

Over the last several weeks, I've been writing some tanka (or at least five-line, short poem-lets) as a semi-daily meditation practice. It's an attempt to grow more gratitude inside me. Lord knows politics --  which has consumed me -- in both the nation and, especially, Iowa have generated much more anger than gratitude.

I've had to make it a goal to look for those shiny grains of sand amidst all the other stuff.
In late November, I grabbed my fly rod and headed to the river. No fish on the line, but a nice image in the notebook.

sweeping oak reflected
in the icy water…
a stoic trout
roosts
in the bare branches

This bubbled up during a Christmas Day hike.


even on these
shortest of days
springwater
gurgles
under the ice

An in-town walk by the river on a cold, spitting-snow day yielded an actual man playing an actual wooden flute to actual geese. Not even metaphoric, at least intentionally.

the river freezes
under a gray sky –
a man plays
his wooden flute
for the geese



And this one for a dear friend.

the chemo is
finished –
a full moon
rises
over the valley



Both the woodpecker and me, looking for bits of sustenance where ever we can.

the woodpecker
knows the grub
in the
goldenrod gall –
I am full