how casually
a brown bird
catches a butterfly
in its beak
and flies away
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.
overnight
the leafing returns
to this dying oak
beneath my hand
such desire for spring
the shape
of my sadness
like a cloud drifting
fraying, taking form again
oh, but I love this life
interrupting
my self-criticism ?
a cardinal
chirrups
for her mate