Tanka Challenge 4/7/09

Rain owns the garden.
Dripping leaves beckon: she is
Stranded by duty.
Clouds darken the afternoon.
Restlessness holds court within.

Wow. That's clunky. May have to try again later.  EDIT: Ah well, it is a known fact that a lot of bad waka (tanka) were written in period simply because of the social obligation to be able to do so.

Muddy marks sully
Pristine floorboards, carelessness
Shaped like a man's foot.
Who would trespass so crudely
Beneath these once tranquil eaves?

I feel the need to clarify something.

The purpose of the challenge is to encourage myself, and anyone who choses to participate, to write. To try to find inspiration in some moment of the day and distill its essence into thirty-one syllables. To hopefully improve one's skill in doing so. Certainly to have fun with it. (Visit shalmestere 's journal for some dillies of humor and creativity.) There are no prizes. There are no brownie points. It's a personal challenge, that's all.

I have just deleted some "comments" from my journal, after having twice informed the commenter politely that he should be posting his challenge poems to his own journal and not here.

Had the poster's poems been in direct response to mine, that would be another thing. A poetic "conversation" is very much in the spirit of the form and I not only would have no objection to it, I might be inspired try to continue the conversation. This, however, has not been the case.  He simply posted "This is what I wrote today" and stuck it up in my journal.

On the other hand, poetry should always have something to say and my reaction to this intrusion has resulted in a somewhat worthier entry for today's challenge.