Tanka Garden
written by: Megan Denese Mealor
Sweet William
loamy lovelorn leaves
cardinal five-petaled knives
guileless gallantry
entitling dukes, poets, saints
warpwise windowsill parade
Cabbage Roses
sprightly honey drifts
ruffled pastel peach bouquets
thin-lipped wallflowers
Van Gogh’s polemic palette
Renoir’s grandiloquent vase
Bloodroot
escharotic leaves
disappointed cuckoo bees
ants erect tall tales
furled floodplain forestry
river cane sap basket weaves
Bluebeard
reared in rich earth
rare mixed border hues
laid-back lenient landscapes
sudden sapphire spirea
new growth from necrotic noons
Dame’s Rocket
deceitful damask
rogue ornamental tinsel
shorn lavender claws
ireful inflorescence
roadside ditches wildflower
Shirley Poppy
impressionistic heartbeats
Victorian verbosity
papery picotee poise
smoky ruffled rays, dove grays
opalescent osmosis
Maiden Pink
Finnish canzonets
breezy electric crimson
tufted, stalkless, stark
reclusive roadsides, ridges
carmine banks of refugees
Red Firecracker Fern
jarred jewels xeriscape
limestone carmine cascade
dieback ceasefire freeze
photosynthetic fountains
dozing ruby rooftop eaves
Hyacinth
blooming from bloodstains
ultramarine poison hue
robust rockery
Apollo’s acidic bouquet
reviving rhizome spring
Golden Rain Tree
canary illumine
well-behaved parkway branches
street gravel garden
three-paneled paper lanterns
foiling urban shame
- Tanka Garden - April 24, 2021
