Tanka Prose

once upon a night
in a far off land called Sleep
I fell—
I tell you now the tale
as best it be remembered

‘Twas a week of tossing and turning ‘fore that fateful eve of slumber—fairies in the pillowcase chanting peals of thunder, bed sheets ‘round my legs in an anaconda’s grip—slipping in and out of stupor come from staring holes into the ceiling. And so, the bed was made.

the storyteller
opens the ancient book . . .
I absorb each word
as she rewrites the pages
for me to read again

9 pm . . . the fairies have left a fine dust on my pillow with the sweet scent of pine; the snake rests quietly on my thighs. I close my eyes and in a blink begin to dream. I know I’ve started dreaming because the fairy says it’s so. I hear the page turn and she is gone.

I wander for a while, then come upon a stream. Sitting near its bank, I watch the years flow by—faces from my past, demons, delights, dullards, and angels, some with a frown, some with a sigh, some with a tear, some with a smile.

In the distance, I see a mountain and know I must ascend. It takes hours to reach the base, days to gain the summit. Once there, I’m caught in a cloud and float out to sea. Something tells me it’s time to let go.

I fall
    a receding wave
    sparkles with moonlight
and I fall
    on wet sand . . .
and I fall
  the sleepless deep
  finally lulls me to sleep
and I fall

a painting
of a boy
playing on the beach . . .
the sea now swollen
swallowing the man

Monsieur Beaufont, an aristocrat from Paris, is throwing a housewarming party. He’s just migrated to New Orleans with his family and has encouraged his wife to sing for the guests.

Bernard, in scuffed penny loafers and faded felt fedora, is always fashionably late but today his arrival is almost posthumous. He trundles past his host with a muttered “Thank you” and makes his way to a back corner of the parlor, his trademark slouch defying gravity only with the help of a hickory cane, and now, the wall.

I’ve known Bernard since childhood. We met during a match of marbles on the school playground and later played football together. He’s since amassed a small fortune navigating the mines in the stock market and by keeping the strings pulled tight on his purse. His lips barely move when he speaks, something he does only under duress. He rarely ventures out these days so it’s a surprise to see him here now. I consider going over to speak with him but he’s commanding the corner with a scowl.

Bernard has one magnetic attribute that we share, a passion for classical music. Symphonies, arias, concertos, and minuets arouse his spirit. I know not to disrupt him while Cassandra is singing a capella Puccini’s “Un bel dì vedremo” from Madame Butterfly. Perhaps we’ll have a brief conversation when he’s done applauding.

Cassandra, a striking soprano fills the stately room with a voice much larger than her petite self. The flaxen-haired nightingale brings tears to Bernard’s eyes. I watch him lean over his cane, straining to absorb every syllable, every note as she casts her spell on the listeners.
When the song ends, Bernard leans his cane against his belly and begins to clap. I wander over and wait for him to finish, then proclaim “That was wonderful!”

“It was not enough,” he grumbles.

“Perhaps she’ll sing another,” I suggest.

“Maybe. I’ve got to pee.”

I watch him hobble to the washroom. Cassandra comes over and introduces herself. Bernard should be here. I tell her how much I enjoyed the song. She says, “Thank you” then moves on to the next guest. I’m left to wonder if there was ever a goddess so graceful, anyone as lucky as Monsieur Beaufont, or a man as untimely as Bernard.

consulting
the hands
of a broken watch
the captain sets sail
on a low tide

First published in Contemporary Haibun Online

wind plays
in fields i once roamed
a billion
blades of grass bending
with the shifting sky

What you saw on that empty hillside many decades ago, I’ll never really know because you carried that vision with you into the earth. What you made of it though, remains a pleasant memory even if time has wasted no time in etching it slowly away. The shelves in the spare room have other people’s stuff on them now. The cobwebs in the attic are new. The rock garden has been ripped out but ants in the yard are still building castles in the sand.

I can remember the creaky sequence of five doors opening and closing through the garage and into the kitchen. A wooden thunk, a spring, a click, a gentle yawn, a clunk. Did you purposely build that into my memories of you? I mean, there you were on the foundation of your dreams raising a home where I could come alive. What I took away from that is nothing less than the stuff of a mythical adventure.

Still, it wasn’t a structure that stood at the center of my universe. It was you. Wood and stone and plaster were no match for your wit, patience, and capacity to love and forgive. What you built beside that little hill can’t be measured with watch or stick. Every year the leaves come falling down. I’m sorry, I can’t rake them all, but that never really mattered to you, now did it?

dreams conceived beneath the stars
have returned to the meadow
where life remains
a poem on the lips
of a child

I tilt my head left to right to left, then forward and back to forward. Roll it around. Shrug my shoulders down, then up, down, then up. Fingers squeeze, stretch, squeeze, stretch. Rotate wrists—bend at the knees, bend, stand and bend. Now at the waste, touch my toes, breathing in, breathing out. Shake it, shake it. Put on some jazz—the needle in the groove popping and crackling . . . settle in at my desk.

The pen is mightier . . . it’s so proclaimed.
I press the keys
and set out to prove it . . .

worldwide love
on the nightly news—
dreaming up
a brand new brand
of species

fog swirls
over roads once strolled
shadows drifting
in the folds of my mind
forming stories in the gray

It’s 9 pm. A truck stop in the distance peers from the dark, welcoming. The on-ramp is quiet, and it’s been a weary day. I hoist my backpack and head toward the lights, three dollars in my pocket, with the goal in mind to get myself a cup or two of hot chicken broth.

I push the button on the coffee machine and a cup drops down. A stream of broth begins to flow. It’s the only thing I can stomach from this device. It will keep me warm for the moment, a little comfort to remind me of home, a 25-cent swallow or two of Heaven on the road. Put another quarter in the slot, order a second helping of sustenance before stepping back out into the neon Iowa night.

I approach a truck driver and ask if he might give me a lift. He tells me the corporation forbids giving anyone a ride. Trudging back to the on-ramp, I study the glow of lightning deep in the distant sky. For three hours, cars and trucks drive by, ignoring my thumb as if it was a mile marker. Exhaustion sets in. It’s time to sleep, but where? I watch the lightning edge closer. Between the rumble of engines, thunder.

I walk into the tall grass between the highway and the on-ramp, pull out my sleeping bag and hunker down. Headlights sweep over me as the traffic flows. I toss and turn as the wind picks up and the storm approaches.

There’s no such thing as sleep. As the first hint of dawn arrives, lightning dazzles the world around. Just as I finish rolling up my bag, the rain begins to patter. Before I get to the road, I’m drenched in a Midwest monsoon.

I’m standing in a light show, taking a shower, the cold wind chafing my bones. Thumb extended from a shivering arm, car after truck after car after truck. Will I melt into this puddle growing at my feet?

Finally, a minivan pulls over, rusted and a hundred-years-old. I jog to the door. The driver tells me, “Put your pack in the back.” I settle in and we’re off. “Sorry,” he says, “the heater doesn’t work.” I stare down at cracks in the pavement through holes in the ancient floor.

the pilgrim
on a journey through time
finds a broken watch
realizes he’s arrived
just in time

for Johanna.

halls painted
in dancing candlelight . . .
my breathing tuned
to the echoes
of your footsteps

How could a memory from 40-years ago tug at me as yours does now? How did you manage to grow in my psyche with such strong roots? I invited you in long ago. But, I thought when we parted, you took what was yours and left. But, damn it; you left me with a smile and a hug and a kiss and a photo of you beaming like the sun. Every year or two, I take it out and there you are, a moment in my life when love took me by the hand and waltzed me into the future. Now, here I stand with the seeds you planted flourishing in my mind. Looking down at my feet, 40-years spent living in your garden doesn’t seem like a very long time.

a breeze
orchestrates the wind chimes . . .
tapping my feet
to the rhythm of your heart
carried around in my head

First published in Contemporary Haibun Online 20.1

he tends his dreams
’til the break of dawn . . .
songbirds
gathering in the field
signal it’s time to harvest

Here, beneath the clouds, a boy feels the first drops of sky dripping from the leaves. Soon he’s a walking sponge, the trail oozing around his soles. A humming patter lulls the forest to sleep. He pauses at the top of a rise, the valley below frozen in time like an Ansel Adams photograph.

damp moss
blankets a rotting log . . .
time perfumes the air
with the sweet scent of death
feeding life

He takes the long way home. But when he gets there, he just keeps walking—walking into the sunset.

many paths traveled . . .
the pilgrim
follows a dove
as if it could carry
a mountain

Fifty years later, on another rainy day, he pulls out a weathered memory, and like a muddy shoe, begins to clean it off. He feels drenched cotton clinging to his skin, sees a shaft of sunlight poking through the clouds. He hears a chipmunk chirp. A doe and fawn bound across the trail. Then out comes the rainbow that told him to move on.

repurposing
toybox relics—
viewing the moon
through his kaleidoscope
he finds a field of stars

First published in Ribbons Volume 19, Number 1 – Spring/Summer 2023

I embark
on a vision quest
to find my identity
but forget to bring
my wallet

We reach the top of Feather Falls at about 9 a.m. KC explains that it’s one of the tallest waterfalls in the United States and says he knows a way to the bottom. The three of us follow him down the steep incline and into the gorge. The air is hot, and the LSD is starting to kick in.

Halfway into our descent, we come to a drop-off. KC seems confused about which way to go. We debate the issue and finally decide that each of us should find our own way down. The hiking is arduous, but soon I discover a steep slope of loose gravel and rock. I sit down and bump my way all the way to the bottom.

No one else is here. Boulders, standing taller than me, covered in blankets of thick, slick moss, line the banks. The chilly water is flowing fast. There is mist in the air, and every way I turn, I see rainbows, full-circle rainbows. I wait for a while, but no one shows up. Drenched in sweat from this excursion, I strip off my clothes and wade into the stream.

a white moth
flits into my thoughts . . .
I cradle it
in my hands
as it falls asleep

Carefully, I work my way toward the roar of the falls. Around the bend, I come upon the rest of the troupe, all similarly defrocked. My chemically altered body and mind vibrate numbly as I pull myself up onto a low rock already warm from the morning sun. The rainbows are even more prolific here where water flows like a feather from the side of the mountain and crashes into the jumble of rocks below. We gather around and grin.

Steve, our resident Zen enthusiast, starts proffering questions. “Where do these rainbows go when the sun goes down? Where does the wind go when it’s not blowing? Who’s got the sunscreen?”

Opening our backpacks, we start laying out a picnic while each of us tries to come up with our own Zen-like mystery.

We bask in the sun for most of the day. Frank begins to stack rocks, and then we all pitch in. Soon the bank becomes littered with cairns. It is the Day of the Rock, it seems. Satisfied with our ephemeral art display, we gather our things and plan the trip back, deciding to go it alone again.

pine shadows
evaporate
before my eyes . . .
the long way home
through mountains of glass

I place my hand on the smooth, stone surface, studying a narrow fissure that runs from the bottom of the cliff all the way to the top, some 80 feet over my head. It looks doable, so I wedge myself into the crevice and start to climb. The first forty feet are easy, with many handholds and footholds, but now the crack is only about five or six inches wide. My knee is wedged in it to support my weight. Slowly, I inch my way up the sheer rock face, pulling up with my hands while repositioning my knee into the crack. It’s slow going, and there’s been progress, until now.

There it is, a rock wedged into the crack where my knee wants to be. There’s a nice space above the rock, but I can’t find anything to hold onto that will support my full weight as I try to pull myself over the obstacle. I’m stuck. Panic begins to set in. I contemplate going back down, though it’s really not an option. Climbing up is much easier than going down. I ask myself how I got into this mess. I envision my death.

Breathe. Concentrate. Focus. Think it through. I’m in the contemplative phase of an acid trip. A sense of calm overcomes me as I let go of my fear.

After 20 minutes of indecision and fumbling around, I find one small protrusion for my hand and another for one foot. I rehearse my next move several times before putting the plan into action. Carefully, I pull my knee out of the crack and for a moment am floating in space. It takes every bit of my strength and agility, but I’m finally wedged in again above the rock. The climb concludes without further incident. At the top, I’m greeted by a tangle of poison oak bushes, which I crawl through without hesitation.

I find my totem
in a dream . . .
the white moth wakes
flicks its wings
and flies away

First published in Atlas Poetica

each bud
opens to its first day,
a leaf
dancing with the sun
like a lover

A soft spring sky hovers over the valley. The rain has come and gone. Without a care in the world, she’s skipping through a puddle, her clothes still wet from the downpour. There’s nothing quite like seeing your first rainbow.

a bee
gathering pollen
flower to flower
touches the trigger hairs
of a venus flytrap

in the din of voices across the crowded room—in the sum of my consciousness—two smiles engage for the briefest of moments. that’s all it takes: magnets attract steel; brainwaves absorb the blow. we, the restless, seek to do no harm, yet we aim for the heart.

the fletcher
adds flights to two arrows
made for Cupid . . .
you and i with targets
on our chests