The air is close but
a cool breeze snakes through my screen
and tickles my skin.
I will fight hard to be light,
carry no excess of heart.
—————-
After pummeling through a few tanka in Japanese (description here), it quickly became clear that writing such in my second language is a long time down the road. We are first giving English a go.
In The Wind is Howling by Ayako Miura (her autobiography), she writes often of her relationship with poetry. This book is where I first read the term tanka and fell quickly in love with its simple, deep lines. I also read that the last two lines should cut sharply from the first three, drawing the reader into some fuller thought. Or something like that. I’m wanting now to go back and read what she says. But I also remember many of her poems (the translations of them to English) caught my attention.
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