With Face Upturned (Tanka)

with face upturned
and wooden with cold
I meet winter
as each star blinks out
behind the first snow  

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Linked to Carpe Diem Ghost Writer #35, where I was honored to be able to introduce Otagaki Rengetsu, one of the forerunners of modern tanka.  Please visit the post to learn more about this talented woman and her remarkable life.

Here are two of Rengetsu’s poems for inspiration.  

looking out over the bay
I see clouds of cold rain
summoning winter
and hear the wind in the pines
whisper its name 

and

Upon
frost-withered arrowroot
pelting
vying hailstones—
the cold within the sound.

Here are my two attempts to write in the same tone as Rengetsu for the prompt itself, inspired by “the cold within the sound”.

A haiku:

daggers of sleet –
this sharp sound
cut sideways

and a tanka:

this November sleet –
it shreds the birch leaves
in the dead grass –
a sharp sound, cut sideways
tossed to the hungry wind

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