Butterflies: Tan Renga Challenge

Today I found a new and very different, for me, challenge in my inbox from Carpe Diem Haiku: a Tan Renga challenge. Now, I’ll be completely candid here – I had no idea how this challenge was really supposed to work. After reading a few articles I found through searching the term “tan renga” I came to the conclusion it was a collaborative poem of two authors, one writing the first three lines – haiku – and the other adding two more lines of seven syllables each, effectively making a tag-team-tanka, at least that’s how I understood it. The challenge page gives the idea and the haiku to start with and what I have here is the completed poem (the last two lines being mine):

  

at the wagon’s approach,
out from the grass
flies the butterfly
fluttering colorful wings
takes her onto the next bloom

(Though I looked, I couldn’t find a photo of my own to use here so I got this image here and edited it a bit to my taste.)

I found this exercise quite enjoyable and, once again, learned something new. I hope you enjoy the poem as much as I did working it up and learning about this style.