Selection from Tanka Diary
by Harryette Mullen
My tanka diary began with a wish to incorporate into my life a daily practice of walking and writing poetry. Usually I go for short walks in various parts of Los Angeles, Venice, and Santa Monica, or longer hikes in the canyons with friends. I also regularly lead students on “tanka walks” in the Mildred Mathias Botanical Garden on the campus of UCLA. Other times I stroll through unfamiliar neighborhoods. These poems are my adaptation of a traditional Japanese form of syllabic poetry; usually a tanka is thirty-one syllables, often written in five lines.
I’m seeing lots of dead zebras lately
on floors of elegant homes pictured in
interior decorator magazines.
“We proudly harvest rainwater”—a sign
in a neighbor’s yard. With a deep barrel
I could humbly and thankfully harvest rain.
Several homeowners organize a neighbor-
hood watch patrol after discovering used
rubbers discarded on their lawns.
Folded cardboard tent-shaped trap
hanging among dark leaves of the lemon tree
to capture the galling Mediterranean fly.
A profusion of oleanders—to beautify
the freeway and filter the air, though
leaf, stem, and blossom all are poison.
Dried-out snake on the road
I brought as a curiosity to the child—
who insisted we give it a proper funeral.
Urban tumbleweed, some people call it,
discarded plastic bag we see in every city
blown down the street with vagrant wind.