Totemic Tanka

dashing down the trail
on a misty morning run,
in the trees and long grass
totemic neighbors peer out--
squirrel, rabbit, bird, chipmunk--
"Which, Friend, are you now?"

As entertaining as writing haiku, twit-aiku, run-ku and many other "kus" can be, sometimes I like to mix it up by playing with other forms.

One poetic form related to the haiku is the tanka. Like haiku, the tanka (both are ancient forms of Japanese poetry) follows a suggested syllable "count" for each line, in this case 5-7-5-7-7 (five lines).