Take Five

Take Five: Best Contemporary Tanka, Volume 4 is now out (and includes my Tanka 'saturday dad', first published in Simply Haiku).

there was evening

woken by thunder

Dervish Dance Tanka

Blockhead

A motley fool in well-worn rags,

rip-torn and bejewelled

in bells and baubles,

rides by astride his hobbyhorse:

“I am”, he cries, “a thing of wood,

a Marotte stick that has no feeling.

The Tree of Life’s own loggerhead

with seventy-seven buds, all sprouted.”

“I have no wants of this world

and laugh at its prince. I drink his dregs

and dance his jigs, for they mean

nothing to me.”

“Let the Devil play his trump.

I shall play the Fool for Christ --

and Shakespeare too --

for both know I know nought.” 

With one foot bare and one foot shoed

he canters down the ciphered trail:

"Tarry 'til I come again", echoes

through the Christ cursed years.