Poetry: A Tanka and Two Haiku

By Jeff Gorfine, January 14, 2025

(Photo submitted by Jeff Gorfine)

clearing west and south
branched-lightening never not seen
somewhere sometime then

at the edges of towns
open roads like no others
curving here and there
moseying by soybeanCorn
distant farmyard lights star struck

brown-green-tan contours
hot spring sun readying the soil
a knoll being disked

Editor’s note: Jeff Gorfine shares two styles of short form Japanese poetry — haiku, a Japanese a seventeen-line poem that is written in a three-line 5/7/5 syllable structure, and tanka, a thirty-one-syllable Japanese poem or song traditionally written in a five-line 5/7/5/7/7 syllable structure.

Root River Current’s coverage of the arts is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts & cultural heritage fund.

Contributor

Jeff Gorfine

Jeff Gorfine of Rochester is a dad; retired community worker in areas of mental health, poverty, corrections & education; writer of strung-words; and lover of reading, long walks and ridin’ backroads.