The Gulls

 Tanka Tuesday Poetry Challenge: Word Garden

Lisa Fox (aka JadeLi) is host of this week's #TankaTuesdayChallenge.  She has given us this prompt.

"Today I would like you to choose three (or more) words from the given list and write a syllabic poem using them. Please feel free to add plural, past tense, etc. to the words as needed."

My chosen words are in red.  I have written an etheree, and a reverse etheree, separated by an American sentence. 

"There's a sea bird above you
Gliding on one place like Jesus in the sky" 
from Rock Me on the Water by Jackson Browne

close-up of a vintage postcard in the author's collection 

 I

walk the

dunes alone

down by the shore

I smell the seaweed

washed up with the high tide

salty slippery I step

into the cold surf and listen

gulls cry out their sorrow one by one

do they mock me? or imitate my grief?

As they suspend in mid-heaven, what do gulls care of man's

 misfortunes?

the waves will carry on when I am gone

tides unendingly to ebb and flow

dunes wash away with wave and time

while white seabirds drift skyward

too soon our lives are done

light begins to fade

behold the gulls

shrieking at

our sparse

joy

©2024 Lisa Smith Nelson. All Rights Reserved

#tankatuesday #etheree #reverseetheree #americansentence #syllabicpoetry