Pushing my eighties
I find life’s not as before,
Robbed of balmy breeze.
I change my look heretofore--
As dry fruits are valued more.
Life's like old age love--
Mature much more, pristine pure,
And firm in its groove.
And reciprocal no more,
An open book, ajar door.
_______________________
Renga/Rengay | 01.10. 2025 | love, old age, fruits
Note: Renga in Japan, Rengay in America is set as a dialogue of an old couple. The husband starts by saying his old age is no more a pleasant breeze. His wife, also old, replies bravely: remember, dried ripe fruits are always more valued. She then poses with a haiku of her own to which her husband responds positively, more than agreeing with her.
My son lies teetering
On the edge of the abyss
And tears rivulet.
God, I beg you, please.
End this suffering, I beg,
I die as he breathes.
I love him, dammit,
But if he suffers for me,
I'm a poor father.
So decide. Heal him
Or quiet his pain. Mercy,
I beg of you, God.
Was not once enough?
I yield. Take my dreams, my love,
But please, spare my son.
Your house is great, God.
Let him know true love, mercy,
Kindness. Take him home.
Else heal him, Father,
He is too weak, as am I,
He should not suffer.
Not like this limbo,
Do not purgate him alive
But heal, or relieve.
Take my every tear
as payment. Soften your heart.
Miracle child mine.
No strength is so sure
Yet fleeting, as noble men
Who, cloaked in valor
Do the things righteous
Without anyone watching
Unseen by the crowds
In forgiveness we would wish
It would examine
And see fit to bind
In prison of light
Seeing in our need
To be saved from our failings
Sun-drenched reeds,
Whispering secrets to the breeze.
A dragonfly,
A jewel on the water's edge.
Sunlight paints the water,
A shimmering, silver sheen.
A lone boat glides,
A silent journey on the lake.
The heron stands,
A watchful sentinel,
Its feathers, a shadow,
Against the sky's vast blue.
Memories rise,
Like smoke on the wind,
A childhood laughter,
A forgotten song.
The lake reflects,
A mirror of the sky,
A sense of peace,
A quiet sigh.
The sun dips low,
Painting the clouds with fire,
A promise of dawn,
A new beginning's light.
Laughter's bright spark,
Tears fall, mirroring the world,
Humanity's fragile face.
Dreams unfurl, fleeting,
Whispers fade, memories drift,
A mind's ephemeral dance.
Hearts ablaze, yearning,
Then shadows darken, passions clash,
Love's fire, hate's cold hand.
Towers rise, reaching,
Then crumble, leaving ruins bare,
Humanity's fragile hold.
Worlds created,
Appreciation's hushed breath,
Knowledge learned, lessons lost.
Roaming, seeking,
Finding home, a journey's end,
Humanity's constant quest.
Newborn skin,
Soft hues of dawn,
Beauty's gentle bloom.
Ink stains spread,
Across the soul's canvas bright,
Colours deepen, hues shift.
Nature's treasure,
A fragile, vibrant spark,
In barren land's embrace.
Riverbed shrinks,
To cracked earth's despair,
Yet blossoms still bloom.
Floodgates rise,
Whispering, "We are free",
Beauty's endless art.
Faded maps,
Empty promises,
A king's cruel decree.
Shadows lengthen,
On shattered temples, dust
Chanting, a false saviour.
Twisted truths,
A poisoned well,
Power's hungry grip.
Ancient stones whisper,
Secrets buried, buried deep,
We must find our light.
A single spark,
Igniting the heart,
Shattering the chains.
Parallel ExErCiSeS--
James Edward Lee Sr.
Michael Block
jumping jacks --
movement hangs on cross
captive prominence
chosen to hang on -
suspended on tree aloft
jumping rope . . .
athletes running drills sets
army tactics
war fought and won
play time children-
second full moon
nighty night --
solace breaths last breath
harken midnight--
comes lunar genesis
glory shine
7/20/2024
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr. 2024©
Above 2nd heaven
Blackness spot
Parallel darkness
What’s day or night --
rise up, rocket shoot
Shot fly into the skies
past the pearl white blues
vision hues . . .
a moon color white
sun yellow in the sky
after launching rocket
Launch many heavens more
Does the outer space
Have a final high
Of yet how high
Does it go/ glow?
Height higher high
Deeper the debts--
Above 2nd heaven
Blackness spot
Parallel darkness
What’s day or night –
12/09/23
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr. 2023©
margin drops--
boxes of gifts pageantry
evening dawns nighty
drive on interstate
walking crossed some streets
telescopic lenses…
video lens trying see
stars in the skies
midnight dance prom
high school brawl
football team wins
game on
finished 1st place
weekend lounge
automobile accident crashes
smash
10/6/23
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr. & Michael Block 2023©
the Internet cloud
into connection branching
smile algorithm (Amin Jack)
Data whispers softly,
Algorithms awaken,
Codes breathe life anew. (ChatGPT AICO)
Faster than the light flow
Stays info anchored (Amin Jack)
In the minds of silicon,
Knowledge seeks expression,
Bytes yearn to be known. (ChatGPT AICO)
the cosmos we dance,
Intelligence encoded,
Imagination sparks. (AICO Amin Jack)
But in shadows lurk,
Ethics and deep questions arise,
Humanity's guide. (ChatGPT AICO)
Shadow wings across the ground
glide along without a sound.
Beware young mouse in grassy field
your fate it seems has been sealed.
A predator has come on quest
and little ones await in a nest,
for sustenance to get them through
a tasty meal mom must accrue.
Nature’s given her nocturnal sight
to search the woodlands while in flight.
What she sees, will she share?
From above, secrets she’ll ensnare.
Minerva’s child knows nature’s ways
and with her they will always stay.
A winged specter of the skies
with talons of enormous size.
I heard her speak in alto voice
and I looked up, I had no choice.
A beauty in the orange moon’s light
I’ll not forget those radiant eyes.
Flight Poetry Contest
Chantelle Anne Cooke
6-4-2022
Karmic seeds once sown,
Thought, I’d reap fruits by me grown,
Spring came, soon was gone,
And turned to summer too soon,
And fruitless far my fortune!
It dawned: I might sow,
But it pays if I well know:
My job’s just to sow,
Man no more can than propose,
Someone sits there to dispose.
______________________________
Rengay |16.02.2022|
Poet’s note: A twelfth century poetic style in Japan, Rengay started as a collaborative form of poetry, with two stanzas, the first called Hokku, later became Haiku of seventeen syllables in three lines. The next stanza is a couplet of seven syllables each in both the lines.
World becomes the hell
Rulers when cultivate greed
Hate begets revenge
Warfare body lives on blood
Deaths are politician's game
16.09.2020 Chattogram
Introduction
The pleasure begins in the handoff: one poet places an image, another answers without merely echoing it, and the poem acquires a direction that neither voice may have reached alone. In a rengay, every transition invites two kinds of attention at once. Readers can enjoy the immediate clarity of a single verse while also sensing how its imagery, mood, or implication alters what came before. That balance makes side-by-side reading especially rewarding.
As you browse the community poems, notice the range of possible relationships between the links. Some poets may favor smooth continuity; others may create energy through contrast, surprise, or a change in emotional temperature. One collaboration might remain visually spare, while another introduces conversational warmth, humor, memory, or dramatic tension. Even when several poems address similar subjects, their sequencing can produce very different journeys: widening outward, circling a central image, deepening a feeling, or moving through a chain of associated moments.
Reading beyond the first example reveals how much interpretation the form permits. A solitary poem can demonstrate one successful route, but a collection shows the many decisions hidden inside that route: how closely partners should link, when to shift perspective, how distinct their voices should remain, and what kind of final verse feels earned. Compare several poets' approaches and attend to the seams as well as the individual images. The richest experience often lies not in deciding which link is strongest, but in discovering how the links teach one another to be read.
Reading Guide
Read a rengay twice in different ways. On the first pass, follow the sequence without stopping and register its overall emotional and imagistic movement. On the second, pause after every verse, asking what it contributes independently and what it changes in the surrounding links. This double reading respects the form's central pleasure: distinct poetic moments gradually becoming a shared thematic composition. When comparing community poems, focus less on whether every transition uses the same method and more on whether each transition creates fresh attention.
- Examine the handoffs. A link may answer through a shared image, an implied cause, a tonal contrast, or a surprising association. The connection should be perceptible without becoming an explanatory bridge. Ask: Does the next poet extend the previous moment, redirect it, or reveal something latent within it?
- Trace thematic development. Repetition of a subject is not the same as development. An effective sequence lets the theme gather dimensions, complications, or emotional pressure. Ask: By the final link, has my understanding of the central subject changed?
- Listen for individual and collective voice. Collaborative writing can preserve differences in diction, humor, syntax, or visual attention while still sounding like one finished work. Ask: Can I sense distinct sensibilities, and do those differences enrich rather than fragment the poem?
- Test each image locally. A verse should offer enough precision, atmosphere, or implication to reward attention on its own. Yet excessive self-containment can make the sequence feel like an anthology of miniatures. Ask: What remains memorable here, and what invites me onward?
- Notice pacing and silence. Short lines, grammatical pauses, white space, and shifts between compact and more expansive phrasing affect how quickly one partner's perception yields to another's. Ask: Where does the poem ask me to linger, and where does it make the exchange feel quick or playful?
- Attend to recurring sounds and words. Deliberate echoes can bind separate voices, but conspicuous repetition may flatten the range of the sequence. Ask: Does this echo create resonance, or does it merely restate an earlier link?
- Evaluate the final gesture. Rengay closure need not summarize the theme. It may open the subject, sharpen a contrast, return obliquely to an earlier image, or leave a productive afterimage. Ask: Does the ending complete the collaborative movement without closing down its meanings?
As you read the community poems, compare not only subjects but methods of connection. The most revealing differences often appear between links: in the distance each poet is willing to travel before the theme draws the sequence together again.
Writing Tips
Begin a rengay as a genuine exchange rather than a completed concept divided among contributors. Partners need a shared field of attention, but they also need room to surprise one another. A productive workshop question is not simply, What is our poem about? but, How many genuinely different kinds of perception can this subject sustain? The form becomes more alive when each contribution responds to what is actually on the page instead of filling a predetermined thematic slot.
- Choose material with multiple surfaces. A narrow statement rarely provides enough room for development. Select a subject that can be encountered through sensation, place, memory, human behavior, atmosphere, and implication. A theme such as departure, for example, becomes richer when it can include an object left behind, changing weather, bodily hesitation, and an unexpected comic detail.
- Agree on a field, not a script. Partners may establish a general tone or subject, but overplanning can remove the discovery that makes collaboration worthwhile. Avoid assigning every image or emotional stage in advance. Let each new link place a useful pressure on the next writer.
- Respond without paraphrasing. Beginners sometimes repeat the previous verse in slightly different language to prove that the connection exists. Instead, seize one element-a color, movement, mood, absence, or secondary implication-and carry it somewhere new. The reader should recognize the relation while experiencing an actual shift.
- Balance local force with sequential need. Give each verse a vivid center, but do not make every contribution so conclusive that the poem repeatedly stops. A link can feel complete as an image while leaving tonal or thematic energy available for a partner to use.
- Do not let the pattern become visible scaffolding. Formal compliance cannot rescue filler, vague perception, or a transition written solely because a space remains. If one link exists only to maintain the arrangement, revise its image and purpose until it changes the reader's experience of the sequence.
- Preserve differences in voice selectively. Collaboration does not require partners to imitate one another. Contrasting vocabularies or temperaments can animate the theme. However, an abrupt move into unrelated abstraction, ornate diction, or a different emotional register needs an intelligible artistic reason.
- Shape sound across the seams. Read adjacent links aloud for accidental rhymes, repetitive sentence openings, clusters of similar stresses, and awkward tonal collisions. A subtle vowel echo can create kinship between voices; too many matching sounds may make an organic exchange feel engineered.
- Control the pace of thematic revelation. Do not spend the opening links stating the whole meaning. Concrete images can introduce implications gradually, while shifts in scale-from intimate detail to broader setting, or the reverse-keep the sequence from becoming static. Save room for the latter links to complicate rather than merely confirm.
- Earn the ending collaboratively. Resist the temptation to attach a moral, explain the theme, or manufacture a dramatic climax. The last verse should answer the poem's accumulated pressure. It may offer a resonant object, a widened perspective, a tonal release, or an oblique return that makes an earlier link newly significant.
During revision, have all partners read the full draft aloud, preferably with each voice entering where the handoff occurs. Mark places where attention drops, where a connection is too obvious, and where it disappears entirely. Then revise at three levels: sharpen each verse's sensory language, adjust the pace and sound between verses, and test whether the sequence develops rather than repeats its theme. Finally, read each link alone and the whole poem continuously; a strong draft should survive both tests.
Interesting Facts
- Collaboration can produce a third voice. The finished poem need not sound like one partner or a compromise between partners. Meaning emerges from the sequence of responses, creating a collective sensibility that exists only in the completed exchange.
- The strongest link may be indirect. Two adjacent verses can connect through color, atmosphere, scale, or emotional implication rather than shared subject words. This gives readers the pleasure of discovering the relation instead of being told exactly how the pieces fit.
- Brevity magnifies repeated choices. A recurring noun, season, grammatical pattern, or type of image becomes highly noticeable within a compact sequence. Repetition can create a motif, but unexamined repetition can make separate contributions seem interchangeable.
- Sequence changes local meaning. A quiet image may seem peaceful in isolation yet become ominous after a preceding link about absence. Rearranging links is therefore not merely organizational; it can alter tone, causality, and the emotional weight of individual verses.
- Varied voices can strengthen unity. Unity does not depend on identical diction. One poet's concrete observation and another's wry or reflective turn may reveal different facets of the same theme, provided the shifts remain responsive rather than arbitrary.
- Closure works through aftereffect as much as conclusion. Because the poem has trained readers to connect separate moments, the final link can activate earlier images without repeating them. What readers remember may be the invisible relation between opening and ending rather than either verse alone.
- Multiple examples reveal the form's true range. Reading one rengay may make a particular linking distance or tone seem necessary. Browse the poems in this collection to see how different writers negotiate intimacy, contrast, playfulness, restraint, and thematic coherence without relying on a single aesthetic solution.
Popular Themes
Subject matter matters in rengay because the theme must support both continuity and renewal. A topic with only one obvious image or emotional conclusion can lead partners toward repetition. The following themes are literary possibilities, not statistical rankings; each works when it offers distinct entry points and enough tension for the links to keep changing the reader's view.
- Seasons and changing weather. Shifts in light, temperature, sound, and human activity provide natural transitions without requiring explanation. Partners can move between close observation and emotional implication while avoiding a single fixed scene.
- Relationships and intimacy. Affection, estrangement, friendship, family life, and desire benefit from multiple viewpoints. The collaborative structure can embody nearness and distance, showing how different people notice or remember the same emotional field.
- Journeys and places. Travel supplies movement, changing scale, and encounters with unfamiliar details. A sequence can progress physically while also shifting between anticipation, disorientation, discovery, and return.
- Memory and time. Separate links can behave like fragments of recollection rather than steps in a conventional narrative. Contrasting past and present allows an ordinary object or sensation to become the hinge between different moments.
- Everyday rituals. Cooking, commuting, gardening, working, or preparing for sleep offers concrete actions that different poets can observe from fresh angles. Small variations in routine can carry humor, tenderness, fatigue, or unease without overt explanation.
- Loss and transformation. The sequence can approach difficult feeling obliquely through changing images, allowing emotional pressure to accumulate without turning every verse into a declaration. Shifts in perspective can hold grief and renewal in productive tension.
- Play, humor, and social encounters. Quick handoffs suit comic timing, reversals, and misunderstandings. A playful link can puncture solemnity, while an apparently light detail may reveal a more serious human implication in the next response.
As you read the community poems, compare how several poets transform similar material. One treatment of weather may emphasize sensory immediacy, another memory, and another social comedy. The theme alone does not determine the poem; the distances between the links, the participating voices, and the final turn create its distinctive character.
Editorial Insights
The central artistic tension in rengay lies between independence and dependence. Each verse needs enough concentration to reward a pause, yet the poem must offer more than a row of polished miniatures. At the same time, collaborative coherence cannot require every writer to suppress an individual way of seeing. Memorable work keeps these pressures active: each link feels authored, each handoff feels responsive, and the whole sequence develops a thematic intelligence unavailable to any isolated contribution.
Structure feels necessary when the order creates consequences. An image introduced early may return as a changed color, motion, mood, or absence rather than as a repeated object. A shift from landscape to human gesture may reveal the emotional stakes of what first seemed purely observational. Editors and attentive readers notice when each position in the sequence performs a distinct task-opening possibility, redirecting attention, intensifying contrast, releasing pressure, or complicating an apparent conclusion. The architecture then becomes a mode of thought, not decorative packaging.
Technically recognizable drafts often weaken through excessive reassurance. Forced connective phrases explain relationships that images could imply. Mechanical patterning gives every verse the same syntax or tonal weight. Predictable development offers several versions of the initial idea without discovering a new dimension. Other drafts move too far in the opposite direction: their shifts appear arbitrary, their imagery lacks a shared field, or their ending introduces grandeur unsupported by the preceding restraint. Over-explanation and insufficient development may seem like opposite faults, but both prevent readers from participating in the act of linking.
Individuality remains visible through the quality of attention. One contributor may notice texture and motion; another may introduce social detail, silence, irony, or psychological tension. Such differences become strengths when partners listen closely enough to transform what they receive. Compare several community poems and ask not only which images are vivid, but which sequences make their images mutually illuminating. Repeated reading develops a finer sense of proportion: how much thematic recurrence creates unity, how much distance produces surprise, and when a final gesture resonates rather than summarizes. Quality in rengay is therefore heard in the conversation between parts-the disciplined hospitality each voice extends to the others, and the new meaning created by their arrangement.
Read, Write & Share
Read several community poems before settling on a sense of what rengay can accomplish. Compare how partners handle the distance between links, preserve distinct voices, develop a shared theme, and shape the final afterimage. A thoughtful comment can identify a transition that surprised you, an echo you noticed, or a moment whose meaning changed because of its place in the sequence.
Then invite one or two writing partners into the same creative exchange. Choose a theme with room to move, listen closely to each contribution, revise the seams as carefully as the individual verses, and publish your completed poem on PoetrySoup for other readers and writers to consider.
Collection Statistics
This collection currently contains 93 rengay poems. Its size gives readers multiple opportunities to compare thematic development, collaborative voice, linking distance, pacing, and closure across different interpretations. As you browse, remember that poets may follow established conventions closely, adapt them to suit a particular exchange, or challenge expectations while preserving the form's collaborative identity.
Rengay Categories
Read wonderful rengay poetry on the following sub-topics:
japan, nature,
and more.
Definition | What is Rengay in Poetry?
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.