Easter Bread – Tanka By Carol Purington

Spring snowstorm
all day I watch
daffodils
disappearing like joy
in a swirl of might-have-beens

A blue sky
framed by budding branches —
this stained-glass window
holds another metaphor
of eternity

Pussywillows
in a green glass pitcher…
spring is late —
the one who used to pick them
lives in a different time zone

       for Nancy

Good Friday —
hospital talk about death
and resurrection…
no butterflies yet
but here and there a crocus

Spring flowers
gay as those in the garden
where they laid His body —
to rest there,
they thought, forever

Easter Bread
warm from the hands of the new friend —
he reads poems
about the shorebirds I’ve never seen
and I hear their cry

        for Charles A. Waugaman

Carol Purington’s latest book is MORNING SONG: Poems For New Parents.  This is a poetry anthology edited with Susan Todd.   St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2011.  Their website is www.morningsongpoems.com.

Carol’s tanka are posted with her kind permission.
All Rights Reserved.

Images courtesy of antiqueclipart.com.