For the MET > Autumn 2008

a bouquet
of home-grown peonies
on my table
my husband’s letters
to his mistress

that music
makes me get up and
dance
like everything else
something I do alone

looking at
a painting of the sky
by van Gogh
its wild comets and stars
staring out of my eyes

lurking amid
a pile of war rubble
blades of grass
who knows how many
lie nameless beneath

one summer
during a day moon
you will watch
me turn into a butterfly
and greet the evening

half a minute
before it reaches the ground
a falling leaf
as I fold my clothes
prior to departure

a tanka a day
a famous writer recommends
I pause
to search for meanings
in buttons and keyholes

at the hospital
the final diagnosis …
he sighs
in genuine relief
it’s not his uterus

examining
my Yahoo mailbox
the same list
of unopened mail
… the ads look interesting

she offers
to read my palm
as always
my life and love lines
barely discernible

I miss you
and cry sometimes
banana tree
how the monsoon wind
blows me further away

At the Beach at Nieuw Haamstede, Zeeland

wild bulls
on Hellegatsplein
sunburnt
their shadows tatooed
onto the afternoon

scent of honeysuckle
coming from the dunes
across the islands
where the beams of
two lighthouses meet

two young girls
at the water’s edge
wet their feet
just enough of the ocean
to moisten the evening

taking home
some sand grains
and verses
I have forgotten
how you left me


My contributions to the Autumn 2008 edition of Modern English Tanka. The start of the schoolyear has been rather difficult under the shadow of an impending reorganization. To relieve my inability to string up verses, I have taken up painting. Honestly, though, I cannot rest until I have found a second job. Easier dreamed of than done. The tanka above were written within a space of some five months, some more easily than others. Now, it's a mad race on towards the year-end holidays ... and perhaps, hopefully, a short break.