Selected Tanka

I pressed his gift
of wildflowers
in the pages
of a heavy book . . .
that I could not get into
  
American Tanka: between cries, Issue 25, 2015 



winter rambling
I come upon snow angels
and bend
to give them halos –
she loved doing that 

Ribbons Selected Tanka, Tanka Society of America, Fall 2015


  
in the big community garden
he stares at tiny seeds
in his little hand
and whispers...
so small 

Tanka Café, Tanka Society of American, Fall 2015 



my father, the diviner –

strange title
I always thought
for a man who preferred
rum over water 

A Hundred Gourds, 5:2, March 2016 



I walk past

the street kid
holding out a dirty palm –
the gray day
begins spitting
  
Spent Blossoms Anthology, Tanka Society of America, Fall 2015 


photo:  Nitobe Japanese Garden, Vancouver - W. Bourke
  
© 2015/16 Wendy Bourke

indelible

it was a nasty day to be outside . . .
the kind of day, you wish away:
 

a gray gossamer curtain
of misty billows and fog –
rose on rain that drizzled
and spat in bursts and blasts

of wet, dank, clammy cold 

that oozed through bodies, to bones 

like just-thawed mud . . . and I thought:

if this day was set to music . . .
it would be a lament
 
if it was a painting,

people would be, barely there . . . in smudges  –
ageless, sexless, distant smudges

which made me ache to snuggle 

cozily into a splendid poem, with you 

where we would be . . . 

an indelible line of lovely poetry  . . . oft-repeated
  

note:  posted for Poets United.

photos:  Bridges across the Fraser River in New Westminster, BC (Skytrain and Pattullo – Mount Baker, in the mist) – W. Bourke

 

painting:  Gare St. Lazare, 1877 (public domain) – Claude Monet

  

© 2016 Wendy Bourke                  

Pedal or Coast?

HEAD DOODLING BACK

I have come to a place 

far from where I had been

a very long journey:  

there to here – 

and between

and although  

it has been 

a wild ride – even so,

there is something, I reckon  

I never will know . . . for

sometimes I pedaled; 

and sometimes I’d coast

but I still couldn’t tell you –

which one . . . I like most.


Note:

Sherry Blue Sky (STARDREAMING with Sherry Blue Sky) of Poets United - A Community for Poets who Blog -  recently interviewed me for the Blog of the Week feature and that interview appears today at Poets United - Blog of the Week ~ Wendy Bourke.  Thanks for this, Sherry. 

photos:  Stanley Park Walk and Bike Path by the Marina – W. Bourke
W. Bourke - M.S. Bourke

© 2013 Wendy Bourke