Seven Tanka for Creation by Joseph O’Brien

• 1
• Photosynthesis
• Before there was anything
• To kiss or embrace,
• Before our bed was warm with
• You, me, soil, seed—or hunger.

• 2
• Caress of plasma,
• Hydrogen and helium—
• Touching my face as
• My giddy hands graze your thighs,
• Heaven’s dizzying columns.

• 3
• Tectonic spangle
• Of plates on the lithosphere;
• Your soft surf of breasts
• Against my trembling shoreline;
• You alone, sole tsunami.

• 4
• The original
• Hertzsprung-Russell diagram,
• This random order
• Constellates your dark features;
• The fuse burns, a comet’s tail.

• 5
• Trout scales, clade branches,
• Ascend in rainbow patterns—
• Your body pulses,
• Shallows beneath coral cliffs;
• Your eyes glitter dark, seaward.

• 6
• Eukaryotic—
• The foundation of all flesh,
• Dante’s (h)O-M-O
• Draws me to the deepest earth—
• Creative, an act of love.

• 7
• The cool part of day,
• A sort of post-coital
• Tristesse setting in;
• We walk the trim-framed garden—
• So imperfect, so complete.

Joseph O’Brien lives on a homestead with his wife and nine children in rural Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin. He is poetry editor and staff writer (Set ’Em Up, Joe! and Sheep and Goats) for the San Diego Reader.