summer string
broken sign
amid the garden debris
Forget-M
as if I’d become
some wizened elder
under the sunhat
unruly silver curls
remarry! I’d
want some old man
farting in my bed?
---
simply friends
walking through the woods
discover
in this green canopy
filtered light is intimate
binoculars
passed back and forth
observation hut
watching gannets court
amidst lovers' graffiti
jut of rocks
overlooking the river
we feel it
the thrill of that
very first whale
too hot
to climb a mountain
slippery moss
along the scenic trail
the back of his shoes
---
is this enough?
I watch him stand
in a tidepool
watching a heron
watching for fish
vows exchanged
under a tall spruce
so many years
in the boreal forest
a private altar
***
Maxianne Berger, poet and literary translator, is active in both the French and the English haiku and tanka communities in Montreal and beyond. Her writing meanders between the minimalism of Japanese forms and the unpremeditated outcomes of OuLiPo-style constraints. She is among those featured in Language Matters: Interviews with 22 Quebec Poets (Souaid & Farkas, eds; Signature, 2013). She has co-edited three anthologies -- one of haiku, in English, and two of tanka, in French, and now co-edits Cirrus: tankas de nos jours. After two books of lyric poetry, her most recent book is a dual-language tanka collection, un renard roux / a red fox (petits nuages, 2014).
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