interrupting
my self-criticism —
a cardinal
chirrups
for her mate
Author: Marilyn Shoemaker Hazelton
Marilyn Hazelton is editor of red lights, an international tanka journal, where tradition and innovation meet. Rostered as a teaching poet with the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, her work includes residencies in France, Japan and Morocco.
the shape
of my sadness
like a cloud drifting
fraying, taking form again
oh, but I love this life
overnight
the leafing returns
to this dying oak
beneath my hand
such desire for spring
how casually
a brown bird
catches a butterfly
in its beak
and flies away