Four tanka for two voices

1

What expectation
of my difficult girlfriends
did I feel and flee?
   Taking steps is the only
   way to approach happiness.

2

Relationships don’t
happen on Mount Everest
but in the foothills.
   I ruined years trying to
   think my way to happiness.

3

My ‘ships all foundered
on my failure to picture
a life together.
   No, you succeeded too well,
   better to love step by step.

4

It’s a great insult
to learn I’m not the axis
of this tumbling world.
   All that goes on without you
   contradicts your emptiness.

Guilford, 2008

Weblished: 5 July 2008, 20:26

Typeset this poem    Related: love loss