Life in the Attic: A Tanka Sequence

she hits me
with hammer-hard words
spring drizzle
accompanies me
on the way home

my chapbook turning
into a column of smoke
in the summer sky
I see a poem
written on the moon and stars

drinking alone
under an autumn sky
I set fire
to my returned letters
embers flicker among the stars

the day I left
her wedding photo came
once again
I bid her farewell
in my winter dream

anything new
under the New Year sun?
nostalgia
like a Cold War spy
moves only in shadow

Kokako, #17, 2012