yes, I love to remember those days and those of my son. I wish I had had a camcorder - too poor or dumb at the time. Thank you willow for your nice comment!

joyce

I sit on these poems for a while and work on them over that period. I can always feel them more over time. I read up on the tanka on the net and found that to be a real tanka the first three lines set the atmosphere, and is like a haiku, and the final two lines must show a change of some kind either in time, location, speaker, etc. The Japanese did not mind if this was always the expected format. Their language is unaccented, and they did not require rhyme. Since all of that is not appealing (or true such as unaccented) to Americans, the rules can be changed for the American tanka. I improvise somewhat but try to keep to their basic format.

Thanks for your very nice comment.

joyce