Tanka ~ Carlos Colón

Searching for Echoes: Tanka Society of America 2003 Members' Anthology (Ed. Karina Young):

inconsolable
I can't even remember
the saint of hopeless causes
snowfall covers
my precious blanket of weeds

war-time magazines
distinguish Japanese
from Chinese, but how
do you tell friend from foe,
a feather from a dagger?

two sparrows trapped
in a library of 100 windows
or am I the one
banging my beak against
a clear escape route?

is this what
our love has come to?
my cat who won't eat or drink
stares at her water bowl
reflection

Lynx XI:2 (1996):

green trees
cerulean sky
the sorrow
of having no
sorrow in my life

just off the highway
in the cold shadows
of the necropolis
I scrub
my mother's monument

Lynx XII.2 (1997):

waiting
for hours
on a moonlit bench
I re-read
the ransom note

Lynx XIII.1 (1998):

in the ship's wake
a pair of sea gulls
follow, then tail off
in different directions
the words I meant to say

Sassy by Carlos Col ón and Alexis K. Rotella (Tragg Publications, 1998):

beautiful
in the way
Dylan's voice is
this white egret
on emerald algae

Feathers hanging
from the handle bars
of my lost bike--
the one you found
in your dream

From behind
the wall I built
between us
the refrain
of our favorite song

Carlos Colón, a reference librarian in Shreveport, Louisiana, is the author of nine chapbooks including Mountain Climbing and Clocking Out, two collections of haiku and concrete poetry. He is a member of the Haiku Society of America, for which he edited Voices and Echoes, the 2001 members' anthology. Colón also is the editor of Shreve Memorial Library's Electronic Poetry Network and Sunday at Four, a local literary magazine published by The Trapped Truth Society.

Copyright 2005: Simply Haiku