banner

Simply Haiku: A Quarterly Journal of Japanese Short Form Poetry
button Contents button Archives button About Simply Haiku button Submissions button Search button
Winter 2009, vol 7 no 4
 

TANKA

Patricia Prime
 

words on a painting –
the cursive meander
of the eye
from side to side,
top to bottom

 

how does one catch
the stones dropped
by another
more careless
part of oneself?

 

my daughter
framed among antiques –
her elegance
a foil to the perfection
of those long-ago times

 

stepping onto the veranda
my poem touched by moonlight
I rest my arms
on the railing, imagine myself
to be, not me, but someone famous

 

you know the skin well –
there are responses
from fingers and hips
so familiar that I ache
with foreknowledge

 

love comes as a gift
like light through a window
supplicant at times
certain of its nature,
determined I will hold it

 

moon in the sky's throat
asking, what will you write?
as it fixes its stare
opening its yellow eye
on the pulse in my throat

 


Patricia Prime is co-editor of the New Zealand haiku magazine Kokako, reviews editor of the online magazine Stylus and the New Zealand journal Takahe. Patricia is also assistant editor of the online journal Haibun Today. She enjoys interviewing poets and editors and has had several of her interviews published in Takahe and online in Simply Haiku, Haibun Today and Stylus. She is one of the editors of the Take Five Anthology and her tanka have been published in most of the tanka journals.