Jenny Ward Angyal

Graffiti

Beneath the leafless branches of the winter wood, a decaying twig lies on the forest floor. Tiny orange bracket fungi have sprung up all along its length. Smaller than my smallest fingernail, their frilled and folded caps bear bands of yellow, cinnamon and brown.  Whoever named this being Crowded Parchment must have known how to read its wordless tale of transformation: oak becoming fungus, becoming earth, becoming seedling. Becoming acorn …  mouse … owl. Bone-white heartwood becoming bone and the dust of bones becoming…

long shadows
on a lichened rock...
scribbled
in the mother tongue
no birth no death

---

About the Author

Jenny Ward Angyal is the author of several collections of tanka, tanka sequences, tanka prose, and haibun. Her books are available on Amazon. She currently serves as global moderator of Inkstone Poetry Forum. 

---