Simply Haiku: An E-Journal

Simply Haiku: An E-Journal of Haiku and Related Forms
Contents Archives About Simply Haiku Submissions Search

Tanka by Michael Ketchek

half the garden
is what we planted
half what we let grow
our son running thru it
waving a stick like a sword

sitting at a red light
sipping coffee listening to
a Grateful Dead tape older
than the waitress at Starbucks--
so this is what getting old is like

this morning
instead of my mantra
Honky-Tonk Women
keeps going
through my head

published in Raw Nervz Vol. 5 No. 2 1998

sitting in the rain
thinking love is gone
the dull sound
of a bucket dropped in a well
hitting earth

watering
the oak sapling
planted at my son's birth
thinking of his children's
children

Michael has had tanka published in Raw Nervz, Tanka Splendor, Five Lines Down, Frogpond, Black Bough, American Tanka and is soon to be published in Tanka Anthology from Redmoon Press.