inner art journal

I introduced my young friend, Maia, to tanka writing. She is just beginning to explore it. Here is one of the first ones she sent me:

Long ago this planet
was beautiful
it used to be all full of blue and green
I had better glance back
and see if there is any left now.

I tweaked it a little for her and with her permission we came up with this:

long ago this beautiful planet
full of blue and green~
glancing back now
I look to see
if there is any left

I think Maia did a nice job understanding that tanka has five lines. She found a nice and simple idea with some sense of sadness in it. I’m going to ask her to continue to work with tanka. After she explores it for a while I will try to teach her about the shift between the first three lines and the final two.

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