Good news. The tanka poems keep coming!

This poem was penned by Auburn McCanta, an Arizona writer and reluctant, though award-winning, poet.

Soon this summer

A humming desert
Lifts its skirt of sand to kneel
Its prayers scorch the eye
Rabbits run from grazing hawks
Scorpions waltz in the moon

Morning comes early
Midday wears its beggar’s coat
A dirt rag of sky
Summer’s so close I can feel
It’s breath going up my shirt

My skin is a heat
Air thermals rise in the throat
Orange blossoms dangle
Hope, yet midnight I’m shaking
Scorpions out from my shoe

- Auburn McCanta