Tanka from Always Filling, Always Full

by Margaret Chula

Published by White Pine Press, Buffalo NY 2001

the black negligee

that I bought for your return

hangs in my closet

    day by day plums ripen

    and are picked clean by birds

                                    In the Ship's Wake, tanka anthology, Iron Press, 2001

from inside the fog

we listen to ospreys

call to each other

—then row back in silence

our knees just touching

saying good-bye

on the table between us

an amaryllis bud

just beginning

     to open

over and over

she tells me about the lump

in her left breast

     sipping whiskey

     I cradle my own

my friends tell me

that they are breaking up

I stand at the sink

—rinse the cloudy rice over

and over again

reading at night

with the window wide open

   in the morning

     a dusting of moths

        on the bedside table     

First Prize, The Japan Tanka Poets' Society's International English Tanka Contest, 1993

hazy autumn moon

the sound of chestnuts dropping

from an empty sky

I gather your belongings

into boxes for the poor

          Set to music by Toru Warabi in his production Peaceful World

how unfair

that dormant flower bulbs

come back to life

every spring—first spring

   without you

for Hiroshima victims

out of ashes

morning glories bloom

from the toxic earth

   what form will it take

     this child in her womb?

after the cease fire

refugees from Chechnya

return to rubble

sparrow weave the hair of children

into their spring nests           

First Prize, The Japan Tanka Poets' Society's International English Tanka Contest, 2000

this night of rain

as wind strips leaves

from their branches

I read my old poems aloud—

remember the woman I was

while sitting zazen

idle thoughts follow my breath

through the twilight hours

  and then the cry of geese

      as they enter darkness

from my teacup

tasting the memories

of years in Japan

   the steam rises

      and disappears