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I know!

I’m late (except on our family blog); National Poetry Month has started without me, and another month feels like it has spit me out and tumbled me head over heels into unpreparedness… but, it is what it is. Outside, the flowers are blooming, while I’m still trying to construct mine. I still haven’t taken down all my autumn and winter decorations.

There are blue edges to the cloudy sky outside, and the tiny boy who lives across the street is vociferously making his opinion about jackets known – he’d apparently rather walk to the park without, and his mother Is Not Having It. As I negotiated that very question on an early walk this weekend, it seems a very Springtime conversation. I think that’s my theme this month: very “now” sorts of conversations. And, as tanka is a poetic form meant to capture “themes [such] as natural beauty, love, the impermanence of life, the activities of the common people and separation,” it feels like a good place to start. “To be touched by things” or in the original phrasing, “mono no aware” is an important idea in tanka writing, which is where I’m going to head with it this month. What am I feeling about this world, in its small encounters, and its larger truths?

(Also, I’m terrible at tanka, so it’s my hope that practice will lead inevitably toward improvement. We’ll see.)

fair weather

mercurial clouds
drift over a placid sky
But! A squall threatens
rain darkens the son’s small face
but kisses return the light.