Tanka: Over the world’s end

Blood red sky of dreams

drips into a purple sea

so far, too far you went

for snow white wings to bear me

to the place where our world ends.

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Over the edge of eternity

A triolet

Painting ©Gerhard Rießbeck

Over the edge of eternity, the silver river flows,

Into the pool at the world’s end, where golden fishes leap.

I set a barque of birch wood sailing, the petals of a rose.

Over the edge of eternity, the silver river flows

Bearing dreams and driftwood to a place where no one goes,

For our little lives are rounded and bounded by a sleep.

Over the edge of eternity, the silver river flows,

Into the pool at the world’s end, where golden fishes leap.

 

Microfiction: They took a boat

Microfiction of less than 200 words
based on the painting by Odilon Redon: la barque mystique

They took a boat, a blue boat with a yellow sail. Where could two runaway slaves go but the river? No one would chase them to the sea. Yet she shivered. He smiled and kissed her tenderly on the forehead, thinking to dispel her fears with his strength. He shrugged off the stories, but he knew nothing of the ocean. His people prayed for rain in the spring, died of drought in the summer. His land was parched; green was a colour he didn’t know.
Between river cliffs of yellow ochre they sped, until as evening fell, the little barque was borne out into the smooth ocean, green as glass. The current raced to the turquoise horizon, and thunder shattered the air into painful fragments.
What if the stories are true?
In her heart she knew they were.
His face contracted in fear when the current wrenched the little boat out of his control, and she pitied him. She wrapped her arms around his useless muscles, whispered words of love that were drowned in the thunder of the falling water. She held him tight as the little blue splinter of a barque shot over the edge of the world.