Simply Haiku: A Quarterly Journal of Japanese Short Form Poetry
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Spring 2007, vol 5 no 1

TANKA

Melissa Dixon
 

waking early
through my window I see
snow on blossoms
watching it melt
drop by drop

--from TheTanka Café, Tanka Society Newsletter, Vol. V. No. 1, March 2004

 

yes--if you hadn't
goaded me I wouldn't
have written this poem
red blood is flowing
through my green-ink pen

 

who can resist the pure allure
of a High Romance
but . . . together-all-the-time?
red lights flash
and my hair stands on end

--from red lights, Vol. 2, No. 1, January 2006

 

summer cabin--
the black pup abandoned
by the roadside
eats himself
into our family

 

rescuing a ladybug
from a dust bunny
I berate myself
for putting poetry
ahead of housework

 

a bumblebee
bangs head-first against
my picture window--
some days I feel like
trying it myself

 

lowest tide--I walk dune
after dune to reach waves--
looking back ashore
it comes to me--the utter
isolation of an island

 

the way the moon rose
the way the sea moaned
the way I hung my heart
around your throat--long ago
but sometimes stirring in me still

-- from Moonset, journal 2, issue 2, autumn, 2006

 


Melissa Dixon Melissa Dixon discovered the joys of Asian poetry some fifteen years ago--moving from haiku to tanka and later haibun--but tanka is her clear favorite. She writes that she "loves its openness to all avenues of expression--always with the challenge to light up the lines while fitting the words seamlessly within their required structure."

Melissa recently published her first book of poetry, Slow Spring Water. She lives near the ocean in Victoria, BC, Canada.