Summer home is based on the traditional Japanese Tanka structure of of 5/7/5/7/7 syllables per verse. It was first published in Mountain Path, July-September, 2017.
Summer home
rain comes to the hills
after the city desert
just as I enter home:
light, irregular, drumming –
rain and heart beats flow as one
*
here in solitude
Mind follows to sink in rest
in vistas of blue hills
then like a crouching cat… waits
to blot the hills with other thoughts
*
plump pink clouds nestle
in the blue rain washed ranges
I smile at the hues –
a girl rises from a sparse field
smiles at my pink umbrella
*
A peach tree in a
luscious orchard never fruits
a forest fire flares –
a singed orchard and the peach
shocked into pale pink flowering
–Neera Kashyap