For Tanka Tuesday Poetry Challenge No. 68, It’s Vacation Time! Yvette has invited us to create a syllabic poem about vacation, using a kigo word with regard to the north south seasonal divide.
Photo: taken at Two People’s Bay near Albany 2023.
Form: Tanka (5-7-5-7-7)
far from bustling crowds
anchored on ancient granite
wetter than the sea
rain so light it washes gently
softening the calendar.
Copyright 2026 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️
At dVerse Sanaa is hosting Prosery (144 words) with an invitation to write prose including the line “The hills so dry, so dense the underbrush, that where I pushed my way the giant hush was changed to soft explosion.” from the poem “On a View of Pasadena from the Hills.” by Yvor Winters
dVerse Poets – Prosery – A View From The Hills
Photo: Forest trail in the Beelu National Park, Mundaring.
Never Disappointed
I often wonder what the first Europeans felt when they encountered the Darling Scarp in late spring or kambarang when the heat returns. Would it equate with my experiences of kangaroo grasses, wattles, eucalypts, banksias, melaleucas , callistemons, grevilleas and more in a burst of vibrant colour? The dry earth, grasses, leaves, powdering with every footfall, the smell of eucalyptus on the wafting air. The buzzing of beetles and cicada songs. The lingering smells of kangaroos and emus overlaid by the sounds of magpies, honeyeaters, red-capped parrots. Sometimes over a whole day, but often all at once, an assault on the senses. As Yvor Winters once wrote of another place – The hills so dry, so dense the underbrush, that where I pushed my way the giant hush was changed to soft explosion. Now, after many years hiking, I am never disappointed by the soft explosion.
Copyright 2026 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️
Filed under awareness, bush walking, Forest, nature, prose
Video taken at Lesmurdie Brook in the Mundy Park reserve.
Open
Alone
sitting on
winter granite
damp and cold seeping
through denim,
creek gurgling
crystal ripples
under respite sun,
the quality of quiet
cannot be spoken
only soaked,
I am fully opened
In this space
all manner of things
come and go.
Copyright 2026 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️
Filed under bush walking, contemplative, Forest, Free Verse, nature, poem
For Tanka Tuesday Poetry Challenge No. 63, Showers Bring May Flowers! Yvette has invited us to reflect on the phrase “April showers bring May flowers,” When I think about this phrase, I think of how nature must endure the hardships of winter to rebirth in spring. It reminds me of how humans struggle through life’s difficulties but still find joy. It teaches us that if we push through our obstacles, we will find success. It helps us hold on to hope and find our inner strength. This phrase is all about resilience! For this week, write a poem about resilience. Find a syllabic poetry form that works for you, and let your inspiration flow. Need help finding a form?
Photo: Taken at Datjoin Reserve, spring 2018, Pink Candy Orchids growing in granite rock.
Form: American Cinquain (2-4-6-8-2)
Pink Candy Rocking It
orchids
showing the way
fissure dwelling softness
eking existence in dry rock
winning
Copyright 2026 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️
Filed under American Cinquain, bush walking, life, nature, poem, resilience
For Tanka Tuesday Poetry Challenge No. 56, A Mother’s Nonet, Willow has invited us to write a nonet (9 lines 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1) about a mother, either our own, or an animal mother, your own experiences as a mother.
Photo: Beelup National Park, Mundaring Autumn 2025.
Trees Of Life
She is clothed in the finest of bark
covered in emerald garlands
crowned with exquisite feathers
washed by clear crystal streams
microbes cohabit
insects grace her
she is life
mother
tree
Copyright 2026 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️
At dVerse Dora is hosting Poetics with an invitation to incorporate a landscape or cityscape into your poetry that either mirrors or amplifies your interior landscape (or lack thereof). Be sure to use the examples above to guide you as to what I mean by “embodying a landscape.” Is there a place that’s special to you, that moves you, that has become a part of you? Perhaps you have a memory of encountering a landscape that has changed you or enlightened you? What particulars of this landscape have inspired, comforted, encouraged, strengthened you, or done just the opposite? Put it all in a poem, and take us there.
dVerse Poets – Poetics – Embodying A Landscape
Photo: Looking out over the western end of the Great Victoria Desert, July 2017 road trip.
My Desert Drift
We talk it rough,
enduring
tough wilderness
everything here sharp,
spiky survivors
like my body wrap
pocked by wounds
bleached by sun
scarred by words
of moral injury,
thorns of pride
hide cool denial,
a soft fragility
exists at the bottom
of my desert drift
held by tons of sand
fragile like talc in a
high summer wind,
only the hollow
boned flora
holds its fleeting
will to live,
every breath a
nervous lurch
of surprise that
another day has
dawned.
Copyright 2026 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️
Filed under awareness, bush walking, Free Verse, life, nature, poem
Photo: taken in April, 2025 at Lake Campion, Nungarin
What Colour Is Silence?
What colour
is silence,
does it imply
darkness
or light,
could it be
anything -
a knowing look
screaming red
quiet soft blue
grey like winter sky,
would make sense
if it were a forest
so green
or brown, when it all
turns to … you know
what I mean,
is it the deep inside
of a nautilus beyond
the sound of oceans,
or the crimson of
my heart mid pulse
I’m not sure,
what colour is silence?
Copyright 2026 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️
Filed under bush walking, Free Verse, poem, Silence
For Tanka Tuesday Poetry Challenge No. 50, To Cleanse, Yvette has invited us to write a poem about cleansing or, atonement. I chose cleansing.
Photo: taken in 2022 in the Wooditjup National Park, the Karri canopy.
Form: Haibun
Grounding
Sometimes an aromatic herbal smudge will be my thing, sometimes an invocation, meditation, there are times when earthy tribal music is my go to, other times I turn to my journal and writing. When my internal seasons are not aligned I feel out of whack, when my soul is in winter I need a thaw, too much summer and I’m running hot, the polarity of passion and melancholy needs a shift.
Lots of rituals and practices at my disposal, but my real cleanse is to go out into the forest and soak up the air, the smells, the colours, the sounds, to just be – to relocate my centre. Being in nature brings me a sense of balance. If I take off my shoes the circuit is complete and energy courses through me, cleansing, recharging me for life.
humous and dry leaves
soiled feet below canopy
ground of deep inner cleansing
Copyright 2026 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️
Filed under bush walking, Cleansing, Forest, Grounding, Haibun, Haiku, mindfulness, nature
Photo: From a 2018 camping trip through the Eastern Wheatbelt, a gnamma hole. Gnamma is an indigenous term for a naturally occurring rock cavity, hole or depression capable of holding water. This one, near Nungarin, is reputed to be over three metres.
Form: a Cherita
ai li created the cherita poetry form in June 1997, so the form is now 29 years old. The official guidelines:
“Cherita is the Malay word for story or tale. A cherita consists of a single stanza of a one-line verse, followed by a two-line verse, and then finishing with a three-line verse.”
The order may also be inverted or turned upside-down: 3-2-1.
A cherita is always untitled and without rhyme.
The bathroom mirror so stark.
My face in the rock pool reflects a
shy softer self that yearns to return.
It’s hard to pinpoint when I put the
armour on but somehow I forgot to
take it off again, it seems now is the time.
Copyright 2026 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️
Filed under awareness, bush walking, Cherita, gnamma hole, poem, reflection
At dVerse Merril is hosting Prosery where we are offered a line from a poem to include within a piece of prose. The line Merril has chosen is – “The granites and schists of my dark and stubborn country.” from ‘The Hill Burns’ by Nan Shepherd.
dVerse Poets – Prosery – Dark And Stubborn Country
Note: I would encourage you to read some of her poetry. I also enjoyed her Cairngorm memoir (it has the quality or feel of an almanac) ‘The Living Mountain’ her prose often resembles a prose poem.
Reflection In Rock
When you live on the land it pays to know your rocks. Granite resists diamond tipped drills and blades, schists are resistant but tend to fragment under impact. I liked both for creating dry-stone walls around the farmhouse, granite was best for ramps and foundations. Both could fracture a plow disk. Granites and schists are also water collectors and form part of the songlines for the indigenous peoples, they were gathering places – birthing rocks for the women, initiation rocks for young men. So too the rocks are ecologies. The granites and schists of my dark stubborn country cause me to reflect on my own nature. Strength is critical for survival, too much causes resistance. Where am I resistant? Where might I crumble? Am I open enough to be part of an ecology, a community of strength that is yet porous, welling up with life?
Copyright 2025 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️
Photo: Taken September, 2018 – a solid chunk of granite! Taken at Datjoin Reserve.
Photo: Redbank Gorge, NT, July 2017. A mixture of sandstone, gneiss, schist and granite.
Filed under awareness, bush walking, camping, farming, prose, reflection, Uncategorized
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Sunskrit Rai
De l'existence formelle à l'existence informelle, j'habille poétiquement le monde, ou mieux, le mets à nu.
Celebrating the Art of Syllabic Poetry
A haiku journal based in Aotearoa NZ
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As Always, More to Come
a monthly journey in a theme that's 17 syllables or less
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Turning trauma into triumph since 1981.
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