Another entry for dVerse Poet’s Pub where Kim is inspiring us to write of a poetic spouse, preferably of someone dead. I could not resist doing a tanka for Kiku, the first wife of Kobayashi Issa and mother of his first two children who both died tragically young. Their deaths inspired Issa to pen: Tsuyu no yo wa tsuyu no yo nagari sari nagara:
this dewdrop world –
is a dewdrop world
and yet, and yet…
Kiku
I loved you in the
warmth of our love – I will love
you in the coldness –
our children dissolved like dew
on the edge of summer grass
kanzen sakura 
Aug 23, 2016 @ 21:39:03
Oh! My very favorite of Issa’s. I put that verse in the frontspiece of my last book. It’s so beautiful…..And yours just as much. Thank you so much for your verse…and Issa’s, too!
Aug 24, 2016 @ 19:55:12
Thank you very much for your kind words!
Aug 24, 2016 @ 02:18:33
Oh, Toni, your beautiful tanka melts the heart. You’ve encapsulated the contrast of love in life and death and complemented original lines by Issa perfectly.
Aug 24, 2016 @ 03:20:13
This is so good… to walk in the poet’s footstep like this… it just melts.
Aug 24, 2016 @ 04:18:50
This is so touching.. and yes I agree with the others 🙂 it melted my heart ❤️
Aug 24, 2016 @ 08:04:29
Oh this tanka is so very very sad….I will love you in the coldness — those words speak to me, having almost lost my love — and then the children dissolved like dew. I am so very touched by this one. So few words – so much heartache.
Aug 24, 2016 @ 19:57:28
“Mist drifts in waves
Ribbon-ing maple branches
The rise of the moon
Make Egrets shimmer silver-
Gauzy ghosts of nothingness.”
–
I haven’t written a tanka probably in two years….today, a first attempt. Again.
Thought you would enjoy this.
Jane (Lady Nyo)
Aug 25, 2016 @ 11:30:39
I do so enjoy this and am grateful you chose to share with me. Today is Open Link Night over at dVerse if you choose to join us! I had a spate of writing nothing but tanka and then….haiku and then…nothing for several years. But got back into it along with free verse, oddly enough. I enjoy writing it all. I do not enjoy writing to fussy forms though and often do not respond to those prompts when given. I am a bad kitty sometimes!
Aug 25, 2016 @ 11:34:08
Well, we must have come from the same litter. I admire those who can write in all these different forms, but I can’t. I can do sonnets, but it changes my voice so much I don’t recognize it. Tank and haiku (and a few other Japanese forms) and of course, free verse are about all I can do. I’ll try to come over to Open Link Night….I’ll post the next episode of “Song of the Nightingale”…hopefully it will interest poets there.
Aug 25, 2016 @ 13:04:39
I’m sure it will!
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Tab®|PRO
Aug 25, 2016 @ 20:59:23
It seems it is interesting poets there.
Aug 25, 2016 @ 01:24:47
Amazingly powerful. Your tanka is a little crystal of concentrated emotion. Perfect.
Aug 25, 2016 @ 10:32:59
Thank you