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Amelia
Fielden: Tanka
distant
sunset
above the harbour gulls’
dip and drift ---
if I really missed you
could I be so happy
my first lover
lost for forty years now
reappears
in the editors' list
of my new dictionary
our trash can
surrounded by fallen
camellia heads ---
worrying about the kids'
employment prospects
"you never
wear perfume for me"
as I go
out the door in sunshine
thinking young again
moonlight stripes
through midnight blinds
I can see
your silent waiting
and turn away
AMELIA FIELDEN lives in a seaside village near Sydney, Australia, where
she was born. As a professional teacher and translator of Japanese, Fielden
has enjoyed a forty-year history of involvement with Japan and its literature.
After translating a volume of tanka, Time Passes, by contemporary poet
Kawano Yuko, she began writing her own tanka and has published three collections
since 2000. Her work in tanka reflects her devotion to both the Japanese
achievement and the need for a new, resilient short poem in English that
is capable of expressing personal, contemporary experience.
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