Sanford Goldstein
 

inaccessible places: a tanka cluster

desire
in empty corners
I walk
this tightrope
of inaccessible places

. .

3 a.m.
and in my bedroom
mirror
a thin slice
of moon

. .

somewhere
out there
connection
for this dark
now

. .

wanting
tonight
only a mind
leaping
shattering through

. .

is it missing
the woman's space
that keeps me
in front
of this white stove?

. .

that bare alcove
white envelopes
with black strings
visitors
before her cremated smile

. .

always
collision
in some inaccessible corner
I spill
five lines down

. .

Sanford Goldstein, poet and translator, currently resides in the old castle town of Shibata-shi, located in a rural area on the Sea of Japan, a region famous for its sake breweries and rich rice harvests. He is a Professor Emeritus of Purdue University and of Keiwa College in Japan. Sanford writes that the above cluster " . . . was written after my wife's death . . . I like this cluster (I now call it---earlier I thought of it as a sequence, but of course it wasn't, not according to my definition) . . . I believe this was written in l975-l977 or so."

Copyright 2007: Simply Haiku