Here are 5 Tanka exploring the themes suggested by the prompts (Answer, Luna, Old, Eyes, Negotiation):
➰
Whispered answer floats
On moonlit breeze, ephemeral
Luna's secret shared
Ancient wisdom in her glow
Illuminates the unknown
➰
Old eyes, deep as wells
Reflect a lifetime of tales
Silent negotiation
Between past and present tense
In each weathered wrinkle's fold
➰
Luna's silver face
Negotiates with inky sky
For moments of light
Answering night's dark silence
With her old, knowing pallor
➰
Seeking answers, I
Gaze into your ageless eyes
Luna overhead
Witness to our whispered pleas
Time-worn talks of give and take
➰
Negotiation's dance
Luna waxes, wanes above
Old as time itself
Eyes search heavens for answer
In celestial diplomacy
〰️〰️
I copied ‘Words in Bloom’ idea to use several prompts in one post. Here’s the way my Tanka came together.
Luna is another name for the moon, right? I thought that was an interesting starting point. I sprinkled "Luna" throughout most of the poems - sometimes directly, sometimes just hinting at it with phrases like "moonlit breeze."
For "answer," I played around with that idea in different ways. Sometimes it's pretty straightforward, like "Whispered answer floats" in the first poem. Other times, it's more about searching for answers, like looking up at the sky hoping for some cosmic insight.
The "old" theme was fun to work with. I tried to evoke a sense of age and wisdom - you've got old eyes, ancient knowledge, that sort of thing. It ties in nicely with the moon, which has been around forever, hasn't it? Or … has it?
For "eyes," I mostly used it literally - talking about gazing or searching. But it's also about perception and understanding in a broader sense.
"Negotiation" was probably the trickiest to fit in naturally. I tried to think of it in different ways - the back-and-forth between past and present, or even imagining the moon negotiating with the night sky for its place.
The lovely thing about tanka is how you can layer these ideas. So in each poem, I tried to mix and match the themes. For instance, you might have the old moon negotiating with the sky, or ancient eyes searching for answers.
For me, it’s all about creating these little word-pictures that hopefully make you think about how these ideas connect. Does that make sense? What do you think about how it all came together?
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