One Sunday in winter Mike Montreuil and I went to a performance by The Griffin Trio of Johannes Brahms’ Piano Trio in B Major, Op. 8. That experience prompted this series of tanka: 
Augmentation on a Sunday in Winter (catkin press, 2014)
Throughout the performance one of the performers gave a running commentary of how the piece worked, which fascinated me. At home, I had come across Pablo Neruda’s poem, “Sonata With Some Pines”, and thought to include Neruda in this Sunday conversation. The last line of this first tanka is from his poem:
a change in the last note/ then down a scale/ down again then/ leap up/ we forget our tired bones
Two more poems from that day:
the key to organic flow/ going back/ to what has come before/ a gentle explosion/ a surprising intimacy
a different mood/ cello’s third set/ of mounting notes/ conversation among crows/ at the top of the pine
It’s a small book, about 4″ by 5″, with a translucent cover, and 18 poems, a chapbook that makes me smile about that afternoon whenever I happen to see it.
claudia radmore 