A three-winter year.
My heart a wistful migrant
Not lacking the sun,
But feeling the seasons’ rhy-
thm has skipped a fruitful beat.
It’s odd changing hemisphere halfway through the year. I feel I’m being cheated, having three winters in succession. And yet that’s silly. Here the sky is flawless blue almost every day, and the sun is fierce even if the air is bitterly cold. There is clearly something else I’m missing. And this tanka tries to put it into words.
This was one of those times when you line up the perfect number of syllables, but they refuse to fit the line breaks well. In the end I deliberately broke up the word “rhythm”. Which gives an effect that it would be difficult to convey in reading aloud, but I think works in the written form.
The version below is a proper tanka, without this word break, but I don’t think it works as well. Thoughts?
A three-winter year.
My heart, a wistful migrant
Not lacking the sun,
Feels that the seasons’ rhythm
Skipped a sweet and fruitful beat.
