Summer Nights

a poem in Tanka form

Summer's splendor reigns
as night's darkness cools the land
the day's heat reprieved
brings afresh the call of life
resonant song of the wild


About this poem and the Tanka form: ▶︎

This poem was written for Week 5 of "Promptly Poetry Challenge (2025-2026)" 
with the prompt: TANKA - Your poem may be on any topic or subject, but it must follow the form.

Poem Form: Tanka
Poem Line Count: 5
Total Syllables:


TANKA form: Tanka is a classic form of Japanese poetry related to haiku.
It consists of five unrhymed lines of five, seven, five, seven, and seven syllables. (5, 7, 5, 7, 7)

The theme of Tanka can be anything from love poems to depictions of everyday life, social issues, children’s growth, stories and fantasies. It is very free poetry, the only rule is to make it in the form of five phrases and thirty sounds. Also, there is no rule that Tanka must enter season words like haiku. It is also one of the characteristics of Tanka that skillfully uses techniques such as Makura-kotoba (stock epithet) and Kake-kotoba (paronomasia) in order to give emotional feelings and deep emotions of the author within a limited number of letters."¹

**I noticed a slight mistake in the syllable/sound count that they put in this explanation. It should be 31 syllables/sounds rather than 30. (5+7+5+7+7 = 31)**

¹ Taken from "Tanka, The Oldest Japanese Poetry’s Definition and Examples," section "How to Write Tanka Poems"
https://www.masterpiece-of-japanese-culture.com/literatures-and-poems/japanese-t...