fluff

my breath sets free 
a thousand downy cattail seeds—
all the fluff 
I need to shed
before the new year comes

~A Hundred Gourds 3:2, Dec. 2013

Sanctum

Janet Lynn Davis
Jenny Ward Angyal

ancient chapels 
carved into the rock face 
of Mönchsberg ... 
once the tourists are gone 
I crawl inside myself 
    ~JLD (Salzburg, Austria)

inscribed
on the torii gate 
spirit of light—
fountains flowing
in the falling snow
      ~JWA (New York City, USA)

~Skylark 2:1, summer 2014

Thanks to my friend & fellow tanka poet, Janet Lynn Davis, for her collaboration on this short sequence. You can find more of Janet's fine tanka on her blog, twigs&stones.

We wish everyone a very happy Winter Solstice (or Summer Solstice, for our friends in the southern hemisphere)!

in a lazy sky

vultures
tip-tilting in a lazy sky
I fling
into the meadow 
the carcass of ought


~Skylark 2:2, winter 2014

echoes

a ribbon of birds
across the winter sky
the echo 
of earthbound magic
in those hollow bones


~GUSTS 19: spring/summer 2014

slow down 
slow down the song 
of the wood thrush
until at last it echoes 
the music of humpbacked whales

~Atlas Poetica 18, July 2014