Tankas and Other Poems

By Willie Plaschke

Tankas

we’ve had this old hope
of waking up as earthworms,
slowly, in the mud,
digesting tiny specks of
dreams of waking up as birds

*

still going, he’s still
going, the angel assigned
to bless everything;
maybe because we’ve hid our
pain so well there’s nothing left

*

truth, not to be sought,
only buttons: big buttons,
round buttons, buttons
that are stars, that are on coats
keeping the sky warm at night

Nocturne, Senior Year

Pouring over the philosophy of Hildegard,
I see an Amish electrician.
He looks like he is going to change things. 
This is ironic. 

I set my book down and exit.
Outside, I see a black tree against a blue light,
a nice light. The Amish man joins me.
He leans on a stucco pillar:

“You have to let meaning flow from things
instead of applying
constructed meaning onto things.”

My childhood flashes
before the moon.

heliotrope

my voice tends a garden
of things

if your intellect is a park
I’m the car

the lights turn on and
we can never leave

I tend a garden of butterflies
I throw my words around
look at the abstract art
covered in fur

and finally
one more thing
hotel seeks professional sleeper
my voice cries out your name

Willie Plaschke is a Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and Folger Shakespeare Library fellow. He studied philosophy and music at Kenyon College in Ohio before earning his MAT from Earlham College. He taught middle and high school English before pivoting to writing full time.