Not Another Haiku

I think I'll end my "Seven Days of Haikus" with a poem that is not a haiku. Now don't get all ornery with me. I already gave you several bonus haikus, if you were counting. Plus, this still happens to be a traditional Japanese poem. It's called a "tanka" and it is a simple two line extension of a haiku. So really there's a haiku in there, it's just followed by two more lines of seven syllables each. Here's a great example of a tanka by the 12th century Japanese Buddhist monk Saigyō Hōshi:

Sending my soul away

To where the moon has sunk

Behind the mountain,

What shall I do with my body

Left in the darkness?

"Saigyō" by Kikuchi Yōsai

Here's a beautiful example of a tanka by the modern American poet George Knox:

Watching her sweep up

November's fallen leaves

I am love shaken...

her body moving almost

as it did when we were young.

Here is my attempt to capture much of what I've been describing over the last several days:

Even the shadow 

Of a parking lot pebble 

Stretched long behind it 

Like a dark cape in the wind 

Is beautiful in dawn light.

Photo by Simon Sharayha

And, finally, I'll end with a haiku. This is the very last poem ever written by the greatest master of haiku ever to live, Matsuo Bashō:

Falling sick on a journey

my dream goes wandering

over a field of dried grass

Matsuo Bashō by Katsushika Hokusai