Falling Leaves

With very few tanka-centered journals out there, I’m honored to have this tanka published in the November 2025 issue of Eucalypt, an Australian journal devoted to tanka. My thanks to Editor Julie Thorndyke for the honor.

autumn leaves
falling one by one
searching for
familiar names
in the obituaries

The first two lines portray a natural scene of seasonal decay, then pivot to the lower verse lines to an emotional revelation of observing a cumulative erosion of a lifetime’s circle of family, friends and acquaintances, each name another leaf detached from our tree of life.

This tanka is both personal and introspective. As I grow older, the awareness of my own mortality sharpens, never more so than when I open the monthly union journal that arrives in the mail for me. Typically, I turn first to the lists of retirees and of departed members, looking through each for familiar names. Too often, I find them, knowing one day my own name will appear there as well. I now regard this ritual as a quiet moment of memento mori.

Eucalypt isn’t available to read online, so I ordered a physical copy, which arrived ahead of Christmas. My first mail from Australia! It’s a beautifully produced journal—elegant, thoughtfully crafted, and I’m genuinely proud to add it to my poetry collection and to have my own work included in its pages.